


Calling Heaven on a Payphone

by Largishcat



Series: Cable & Deadpool Kinkmeme Fills [2]
Category: Deadpool (Movieverse)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Gratuitous Fourth Wall Breakage, Lots of Angst, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Open Relationships, Pre-Poly, Self-Harm, Smut, Vanessa is Mistress Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-24 13:52:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14955872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Largishcat/pseuds/Largishcat
Summary: Cable settles into the 21st century, Vanessa develops posthumous superpowers, Wade breaks into his friends’ homes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for [ this prompt on the kinkmeme](https://iiintangible.dreamwidth.org/458.html?thread=6858#cmt6858): 
> 
>  
> 
> _I'm craving for something emotional and a mix of fluffy and angsty. Set Post-movie, Vanessa's still dead._
> 
> _Vanessa and Wade have an open relationship, but Wade didn't really act on anything when they were together because he loves her too much. And then Wade meets Nate, and he's falling, and he knows he's allowed, but he STILL wants Vanessa's permission._
> 
> _So basically, I'm asking for Wade getting Vanessa's approval, during one of those days when he almost dies and he sees her._
> 
> _Bonus points if it takes him multiple near-deaths and talks with Vanessa for him to even ADMIT he likes Nate._
> 
>  
> 
> Now with a self-indulgent epilogue!

“Run that whole thing by me again,” said Domino.

“Well, first I said, please use this ouija board with me so I can talk to my dead wife,” Wade repeated, carefully enunciating every word. “Then you were like ‘What? Why? Don’t you see her every time you have a near death experience, which is several times a week?’ Yes,” he raised a hand, stopping Domino as she opened her mouth, “I’m paraphrasing, but shhh, this exposition is necessary. Bear with me.”

“What?”

“ _As_ I was saying, you were all like ‘but Mr. Deadpool, my valued friend and mentor, don’t you see Vanessa pretty regularly, what with all the getting shot in the head, lungs, and dick you do?’ And I was like why _yes_ , I do, but death makes you _super_ cryptic apparently, and some conversations are too important to have in five second intervals over the course of multiple weeks, you know?”

“I guess?”

“Thus, the ouija board!” Wade brandished the shiny cardboard, obtained for $3.57 and a pack of gum from the Toys’R’Us down the road. God bless closing sales. “It’ll be a bonding experience for us!”

“Yeah…” Domino hissed through her teeth, “I’m thinking no?”

“What,” Wade gasped, drawing the word out. “You can’t say no, the entire premise of this story rests on me having an in-depth, mature, and emotionally open conversation with my wife. Which it has been established in the movie canon I cannot do through normal means! Both because Ness is dead,” whoops, that was a sob. Just keep talking, maybe no one would notice, “and because my shitty healing factor is _way_ overenthusiastic. And yet,” Wade gesticulated sharply, “won’t unfuck my face. What the fuck is up with that? If this whole thing is burn scars in this continuity instead of a herd of overactive tumors, shouldn’t it have healed? I mean, I’m not getting any _new_ scars. I think. Apart from emotional ones.”

Domino was giving him weird look. A mixture of confusion and pity that made Wade want to stab himself in the face. “I don’t know what any of that means,” she said, almost gently, “but I do know that ouija boards are 100% white people bullshit, and I don’t want to get possessed by a demon. Why don’t you ask Cable? He’s white, and they probably don’t have horror movies in the future. He won’t know about the demons.”

“He is super white, isn't he?” Wade nodded. Domino rolled her eyes _very_ unsubtly, like she didn't even care if Wade saw her or not. “And nice to see you’re perfectly willing to let _him_ get possessed. Aren't you two working together on his extremely vague plan to save the world?” Domino shrugged. “Anyway, I can’t,” Wade said. “He’s what I want to talk to Ness about.”

“Okay?”

“Maybe we should flashback to get some context.”

“Why does nothing you say ever make any sen—”

 

_Five Weeks Earlier_

 

“You know what’s bullshit?” Wade half-asked, half-announced, propping his boots up on Cable’s kitchen table.

“Hmm?” Cable was doing something mysterious with his Extra Cool Futuristic Swiss Army Gun, which involved disassembling it, and spreading the pieces all over the table, the chairs, and some of the floor. Or, not originally the floor, but Wade had to sit somewhere. He casually nudged some kind of glowing springy thing off the table with his heel. Cable didn't react. Spoilsport.

Jesus Christ on a Sybian, though, that was the still biggest, most complicated gun on the planet. It was a little hypnotizing, watching Cable fit all the little pieces back together. Like a YouTube video of someone doing a jigsaw. It did beg a certain question, though: compensation or advertisement?

“Hey, is your dick metal?” Wade asked, poking a little cartridge thing with his finger until it too fell on the floor.

“Maybe if you stop knocking bits of my gun on the floor, I’ll show you,” Cable said, not looking up.

“You know, I’m so glad we’ve reached the snappy banter stage of our relationship,” Wade said, “but it’s a little bullshit that I can’t shock you anymore. I feel like the spark’s fading.” He stretched, several more cogs and gears falling to the floor.

“You never shocked me,” Cable deftly saved two parts of the barrel from Wade’s marauding feet, and slotted them together, “just annoyed me. Is that the bullshit?”

“Huh?”

“You asked me if I knew what was bullshit.”

“Oh, right.” Wade scratched his chin through the mask. “ _No_ , what’s bullshit is this continuity’s all fucked up, so we can’t even use our classic, super awesome catchphrase! I mean, it’s literally the title of our _ship manifesto_ , but if I tried to say it everyone would be all ‘huh? What the fuck?’ Here, look.” Wade waited to make sure Cable was looking. “Bodyslide by two.”

Cable’s eyebrows climbed all the way to his hairline. “What the _fuck?_ ”

“I told you so!” Wade lifted both arms in the air, triumphant.

“No,” Cable said, laying the half reassembled gun down on the table, “I understood what you said. What I don’t understand is how do you know about bodyslide tech. That won’t be invented for another fifty years, at least.” His eyebrows had come all the way back down, furrowed over serious eyes.

“Oh,” Wade let his arms drop back down. “Well, that’s even more bullshit then. Could’ve incorporated it into the canon, and didn't.”

“I asked how—”

“There,” Wade cut him off, “is no _possible_ way I could explain it to you in a way that made sense.”

Cable didn’t look convinced, but he returned his attention to his work.

“So, about your dick, which I’m guessing is at least 30% metal. 40%? Holy shit, is it over 50% metal?”

“No,” Cable grunted, “and this isn't real metal.” He tapped his opposite wrist with his flesh hand. “It’s infected with a virus from my era. Hijacks the host’s cells to reproduce, slowly converts the entire body into techno-organic flesh. Kills you once it gets too far embedded in the brain.” Cable gestured to his one glowing eye, the metal crawling up his neck. “Got close to killing me, before we figured out a way to slow it down.”

Well, that all sounded depressingly familiar, with a dash of sci-fi dystopian flare. The writers really were pushing the similarities this time around, weren't they.

“What stopped it?” Wade asked. He felt like he should express sympathy, or solidarity, or something, but fuck him if he could think of anything less awkward than _hey, at least your sci-fi cancer looks cool_.

“Telekinesis.”

“You’re fucking _telekinetic?_ ” Wade dropped the wire he had been playing with. 

“Telepathic too.”

“Bull _shit_ you are, that was not mentioned in the script at all! What am I thinking of right now?”

“I can’t tell.” Cable’s eyes flicked up to Wade. “It doesn’t work on people with healing factors.”

“Ha!” Wade pointed at him in triumph. “You’ll never know I was thinking about your robot penis the entire time.”

Cable actually snorted. Loudly, too. Wade sat smugly while Cable finished putting the Awesome Gun back together, piece by meticulous piece. They fell into something like a rhythm, with Wade narrating his current game of Candy Crush, and Cable working, interjecting every now and then. It was oddly comfortable.

That was how the trouble started.

It was trouble that didn’t look like trouble at first. It just looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But like carnivorous plants and 0% APR* credit cards, some things that looked harmless on the surface were just waiting for you to let your guard down, so they could literally eat your face.

“Okay, but when was the last time you had your face eaten by a plant?” Weasel asked, pouring hot water into his World’s Best Grandma mug (a Christmas present from Wade). “Credit card companies I believe, but most carnivorous plants don’t get very big.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Wade said. “Aren’t you going to offer me any tea?”

“Well, I would, but I don’t want you to stay.”

How rude. Surely him and Weasel had been friends long enough that Wade could invite himself over to Weasel’s apartment. At 5 a.m. on a Tuesday. Weasel stifled a yawn under Wade’s affronted glare.

“You know what he told me yesterday?”

“Who?” Weasel asked.

“Cable!”

“What did he tell you,” Weasel sighed.

“He _said_ ,” Wade leaned on his elbows across the kitchen counter, making sure he was taking up Weasel’s entire field of vision, “in the middle of a _job_ —actually, I’m not going to be able to explain this in a way that does it justice. Flashback within a flashback.”

“What?”

 

_Eight Hours Earlier_

 

“Hey,” Cable said, walking sedately down the stairs to where Wade was sprawled at the foot, waiting for his ribs to untangle from his lungs. The vibrations of his heavy tread did _not_ feel great on Wade’s poor, abused, little body, “didn’t you say you were special forces?”

“Yeah,” Wade said, strained. “Ten years, give or take.”

Cable pulled Wade’s arm out straight from where it was wedged behind his head, laying it out at a better angle to heal. “I know you feel pain,” Cable said as Wade made a sound like a dying cat, “and unless bootcamp’s a whole lot different here than in the future, they trained you to fight while avoiding injury.” Oh no, this was not a conversation Wade wanted to have, but his legs were still broken so he couldn't run. “If you’re letting yourself get put through the meat grinder as some kind of fucked up self-punishment—” 

“You know I feel so much better thanks for the pep-talk!” Wade said desperately, but Cable soldiered on.

“—You don’t deserve to hurt. Also, waiting for you to heal like this wastes fucking time.” And with that, Cable patted him on the chest, shouldered his gun, and walked away.

 

_Eight Hours Later_

 

“… Okay?” Weasel said. “So, he’s perceptive, and way more professional than you. And I could have told you about your weird,” Weasel waved a vague hand, “self-harm thing.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t care.”

“Implying that he does!” Wade wailed, scooting himself up on the counter so he could collapse dramatically across it. He was careful to knock over Weasel’s fruit bowl.

“Please don’t do that.” Wade knocked over the sugar bowl. “Unbelievable. You’re like a fucking cat. One of those weird, hairless ones that look like goblins.”

“I just don’t know if I’m ready for emotional intimacy again. We have _great_ banter, but I thought we’d have one of those cool, manly friendships where we only talk about sports and guns and objectifying women.”

“Hey, do you think I should get a cat?”

“That’s a reasonable assumption, right? He is _so_ hypermasculine. Like someone brewed him up in a lab specifically to make cis men insecure about their dick size. He looks like he lives exclusively off raw eggs, protein powder, and whiskey.”

“Not one of those bald ones, they’re really ugly. No offense. I want a cat with hair.”

“ _’You don’t deserve to hurt.’_ Who just comes out and _says_ that?” Wade sat up, swinging his legs to dangle over the side. Weasel was on his phone, scrolling through the local shelter’s adoption listings. “Hey!” Wade grabbed his phone. “I’m freaking out and need support.”

“I support you sucking Cable’s cock or whatever!” Weasel said, trying to snatch his phone back. “I’m trying to provide a safe, loving home for a homeless animal here.”

“You’d be a terrible cat mom,” Wade told him, giving him back his phone. “What are you going to do if your cat daughter is trying to talk to you about her feelings? Ignore her like you ignored me?”

“I was paying attention,” Weasel said, eyes once again glued to his phone. “Something about dicks and protein powder. What about this one?” He showed Wade a picture of a ginger cat with one of its front paws missing. 

“Aw, adorable. What are you going to name her?”

“Impurrator Furiosa.”

“ _Yes._ ” Weasel was cool sometimes, even if he was terrible at emotional support. “Anyway,” Wade said, hopping off the counter, “you’ve been completely useless. I’m going to go shoot myself in the head.”

“Tell Vanessa I said hi,” Weasel said, waving absently.

“Definitely won’t!”

 

_Twenty Minutes Later_

 

“Still not time, baby,” Vanessa smiled. “Just like it wasn't yesterday, or three days ago when you threw yourself in front of that ice cream truck that tried to drive away from you.”

“Pretty sure it’s mutant discrimination to refuse me service,” Wade said, resting his hand against the invisible barrier that separated them. 

“Are you a mutant?” Vanessa tilted her head to one side, in that cute, quirky puppy way she always did.

“I think? It’s unclear. Anyway, I need advice and Weasel is being a dickbag. We don’t have much time, so just tell me the first thing you think of.”

“Hmm, use your head?”

“Which one?”

Vanessa laughed, and Wade felt his heart break a little more. “Whichever seems situationally appropriate,” she said, the vision already fading. “You’ll do the right thing.”

Wade blinked back to life just in time to take a faceful of Domino’s fist.

“Why did you come to _my_ apartment to shoot yourself?” she yelled. Wade blocked her as she tried to punch him again. “Did I do something to piss you off?” Wade tried to throw her off his chest, but his elbow twisted weird and Domino used the momentum to bounce his head off the granite coffee table.

“Ow! Hard wood floors! Hard wood floors! My place has carpet!”

“Jesus,” Domino said, and let him go. She stepped over him, padding into her kitchen. “At least most of your brains got on the throw rug. I wanted an excuse to toss it.”

Wade turned over on his back, staring up at the ceiling as his nose reset itself. He still didn't know what to do, and Ness was probably right that the only way to figure it _out_ was to sit down and actually think. Maybe do some journaling. Ugh.

“You know, my life is really hard,” Wade told the room.

“Hey, could you maybe leave?” Domino asked. “I’m going to bring a girl back here later.”

 

_Roughly Two Weeks Later_

 

One of the first things had Wade learned about Cable, as they navigated the early stages of their maybe-friendship, was that the man had a surprisingly long fuse. Sure, when he had a goal in mind, Cable could steamroll over anything and anyone, but if there were no innocent children who urgently needed to be killed? His tolerance for Wade’s bullshit was _impressive_. As far as Wade could tell, and he had been experimenting, he could run his mouth for basically ever and not get anything worse than some pithy snark in return.

Touching Cable unexpectedly, though, could get him punched, slash stabbed, slash tossed across the room with Cable’s _badass_ telekinesis. As Wade found out through a series of _hilarious_ practical jokes. Still, sometimes Wade’s curiosity overrode his desire not to get punched.

“I AM GOING TO GRAB YOUR PEC,” Wade announced very loudly and clearly. “DON’T STAB ME, I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT A METAL BOOB FEELS LIKE.”

“It feels like fucking metal, Wade, don’t do that,” Cable said, smacking Wade’s hand away. “Go play outside, I’m busy.” He was engrossed in some kind of research on the clunky, but perfectly serviceable laptop Domino had found in a dumpster last week, occasionally muttering to himself about how slow the internet was in this century.

“But, Cable,” Wade whined. “Wait, did you ever tell me your real name? Seems weird that we’ve been best friends for all of three weeks, and I still don’t know your real person name. Please tell me it isn’t, like, Rip, or Rod, or Magnus.”

“Nathan.”

“Hmm, acceptable. Masculine, but not _too_ much.” Wade inched his hand closer to Cable’s—Nathan’s?—chest, aiming for the tantalizing glimpse of sideboob exposed by his loose tank. “Got a nickname? I’m feeling Priscilla. Could _not_ tell you why.” He was so close, just another inch—

A metal hand closed around Wade’s wrist _just_ as his fingers brushed the warm metal. He was jerked to the side, flipped neatly over Cable’s outstretched leg, and deposited on the floor in an ungainly sprawl.

“My wife called me Nate,” Cable said, kicking Wade lightly in ribs. He turned his attention back to the laptop as Wade untangled himself and sat up. Wade scooted forward across the floor, until he could rest his chin on—Nate, okay, Nate worked—Nate’s thigh. He could hear a very quiet sigh, but he wasn’t shoved off.

“So... can I call you Nate, then?” Wade tried to flutter his eyelashes, but it probably didn't translate through the mask.

“Wouldn't have told you my name if I didn’t want you to use it.”

“Yes!” Wade pumped his fist. “Totally best friends.” 

Nate huffed. Wade stayed right where he was. It was weirdly nice, being down there with the soft sound of Nate’s typing in the background. It was even soothing, for the entire sixty seconds of stillness Wade managed before the silence became unbearable.

“ _Please_ can I touch your metal boob?” Wade said and Nate growled “Jesus” under his breath before grabbing Wade’s hand and dragging it up to rest over the metal boob in question.

“There, you happy? Can I work now?”

“So fucking happy.” Wade might’ve teared up a little, it was like all his dreams were coming true. 

The metal under his fingers was warm, and had much more give than Wade would have expected. Not like Colossus, who was built like a very sexy statue—a hardass in more than one sense—no, this metal boob very obviously belonged to a living, breathing person. Wade could feel the faint pulse of Nate’s heartbeat.

“Hey,” Wade said, “is your heart made of metal?”

Nate paused, glancing down at where Wade was now half draped over his lap. “Partially. Don’t know for sure how much of my insides are fucked up at this point. Haven’t been able to see a doctor for almost,” he tapped the table with a finger, “ten years?”

“Shit,” Wade whistled. “Me, personally, I’m never getting near another medical professional for the rest of my artificially elongated life. Make sure to put a circle of apples around my bed before I go to sleep every night and everything. But _you_ , the writers never mentioned any associated trauma for _you_ —”

“Huh?”

“And there are totally doctors here! There are so many doctors.” Wade let go of Nate’s boob, unfolded himself, and hopped up on the table, perching his butt next to the laptop. "Most of ‘em will try and take your other arm in fees—your mistake for time-hopping to _America_ instead of the glorious Canadian motherland—but I could totally get Domino to help you find a free clinic! Who _knows_ what kind of crazy, futuristic STIs you’re carrying around in your robot dick?”

One side of Nate’s mouth twitched. “You worried about me?”

“Uh, not sure where you got _that_ from—”

“Aliya used to do the same thing. Joke around to hide the fact she was worried.”

“And Aliya would be your wife, I’m guessing. Who I remind you of so much—look, I have to know, were you _aware_ of how that sounded as you were saying it. Before? After?”

“I don’t say things by accident,” Nate said.

“Okay, but you _realize_ —”

“I said,” Nate interruped, “I don’t say things by accident,” completely matter-of-fact, like he wasn’t shifting Wade’s entire paradigm. Wade actually fell silent for a long moment, processing.

“Wait, wait, fucking wait, holy _shit_ ,” Wade said, holding up a hand. “When you said I reminded you of your wife, was that a fucked up, futuristic _pickup line_?”

“Not exactly,” Nate said, not even having the grace to look embarrassed. “In the future, everyone’s lost someone. Usually a lot of fucking someones. People have holes in their lives, where their loved ones used to be.”

“Dark, dark, very dark.”

“Someone tells you you remind them of someone they lost,” Nate went on, ignoring Wade, “means they think you’re trustworthy. You’re the right shape to fill that hole.”

“You _must_ know how dirty that sounds.” Nate rolled his eyes. “But, wait some fucking more,” Wade gasped. “That was _before_ you saved my life. Unless,” he pointed dramatically at Nate, “you never planned on going home in the first place! You lying bastard, you made me think I was special!”

“Said I didn’t do it for you,” Nate said.

“Yeah, but you said it in a way that made it seem like you did.”

“Pretty sure I didn’t.”

“Pretty sure you did. And you are 100% obfuscating the point because that was still a fucking pickup line! You think I’m the right shape to fill the _wife sized_ hole in your life?”

“Guess so.”

“Oh.” Wade paused. “Sometimes, when you manhandle me, I get the urge to call you daddy?”

“Okay?”

“So, why’d you really stay.”

“Told you,” Nate grunted. “Have to stop you braindead idiots from ruining the planet. Wanted to go back a little farther, but there’s still time. Things start to get really fucked in the next couple years.”

“How bad?”

“Enjoy the beach while you can. In ten years, non-stop hurricanes will make the east coast uninhabitable.”

“Fuck,” Wade whistled. “You know, everyone is out there trying to save humanity from, like, aliens, the government, or the purple personification of libertarianism, and you’re here fighting _climate change_.”

“I guess.”

“It is _weird_ how easily they made you relevant for a modern audience.”

“Uh-huh. You going to let me work, or did you want hear some more pickup lines?” And there was something about the tone, the tilt of that rugged fucking jaw—that hit Wade upside the head with the suspicion that he was, actual facts, getting hit on a little.

Wait, no, that couldn't be right. Absolutely no chance. Time for a super smooth deflection before Wade showed too much enthusiasm and got punched. But Nate _had_ said—

"Are you fucking with me or flirting with me?" Wade said before his brain could corral his traitor tongue. All those years of saying whatever popped into his head were finally coming back to bite him for absolutely the first time.

“Flirting.” 

“What in the mother _fuck?_ ” Wade said, almost slipping off the edge of the table. “What is wrong with you?”

“Can’t explain attraction,” Nate shrugged, completely unfazed. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You going or staying?”

“Um.” Wade’s brain tried to come up with something clever and casual to say to diffuse the sudden tension in the air. Something that would make Nate do that little snort thing he did when he was annoyed but also amused. 

He had nothing, his brain had completely stalled out. “Fuck fuckity fuck. Flash-forward!”

 

_Five Hours Later_

 

“Weas,” Wade hissed into his phone, tucked precariously between his shoulder and ear as he scaled the wall, “I need romantic advise.”

“Absolutely not,” came Weasel’s scratchy voice. “First, because it’s one in the morning, and second, because I refuse to have this conversation.”

“Ooh, too late, buddy,” Wade said, levering the window open and slipping inside, “I’m already in your apartment.”

“Goddammit, Wade.”

“Bye darling, I’m hanging up. Meet me in your kitchen in two minutes or I’m setting your bedsheets on fire. Kisses.”

“You fucking ass—” Wade hung up and closed the window behind him. He could hear Weasel cursing loudly from the other side of the apartment. Wade headed to the kitchen, flipping on every light switch as he passed from room to room. 

Weasel stomped in a few minutes later, in a ratty bathrobe, the most _adorable_ tripod cat ever trotting after his heels.

“Oh nooo,” Wade said softly, sinking to his heels. “You must be Impurrator Furiosa. I’d witness your fluffy little face anytime.” He made the V8 sign at her.

“Don’t talk to my cat,” Weasel said. “I don’t want her to grow up to be a delinquent.”

“You injure me.” Wade stood back up, and went to go perch on one of the breakfast nook stools. It was _really_ unfair that all his friends had nicer apartments than him. Who would have thought filling your kitchen with diesel and lighting a match would ruin your credit?

“Yeah-huh. What do you want. Also, where have you been? Domino was looking for you earlier.”

“I was walking the streets talking to myself out loud like a normal New Yorker! It doesn’t matter! I need to know if it’s okay for me to sleep with Cable.”

“Oh, fuck nope. I am not dealing with this.” Weasel threw his hands up in the air and walked out of the room. After it became apparent that he wasn’t coming back, Wade followed.

“Weas, come on,” he whined. 

“Look, why are you even talking to _me_ about this?” Weasel asked, trying and failing to shut his bedroom door in Wade’s face. “I’ve _never_ wanted to know anything about your weird, fucking, avocado sex life. I don’t want to acknowledge the fact that you have sex _at all_. Leave me alone.”

“Aw, Weasel, you’ve walked in on me more than once. You know this fuck train pulls into all kinds of—”

“Yeah, I walked in on you because you used to bring girls back to _my_ fucking apartment—”

“And guys! Don’t erase me.”

“—And I still don’t get why you’re talking to me! I already said I support you sucking his dick! You have my opinion, I’m not the person you need to talk to, please let me sleep.”

“Oh shit, you’re right,” Wade said, snapping his fingers. 

“I am?”

“There’s only one person I _really_ need to talk to about this.”

“Cable?”

“Vanessa!”

“The... dead one?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Weasel sighed.

 

_Six Productive Hours Later_

 

The first glow of morning light saw Wade sprawled out on the floor, mask off, carefully sketching out his plan of attack in crayon, Impurrator Furiosa curled up on the small of his back.

“You know, after you had your big epiphany, I thought you were going to leave,” Weasel said, a giant mug of coffee clutched in one hand, and the world’s bitchiest expression on his face.

“This is a very delicate process,” Wade said, underlining _at least he’s not Colossus?_ in green.

“How delicate could it be? You jump off a bridge or something, you have a bunch of weird, fucking hallucinations as your brain asphyxiates, you come back with a new sense of purpose, you get your horrible, knobbly dick wet. Simple.”

“Ribbed for her pleasure,” Wade said, “or his. But wait, wait, wait, ‘weird _hallucinations_ ’? Are you saying you _don’t_ believe I see my beautiful wife in the afterlife every time my brain gets smushed?”

“You know I don’t believe in the afterlife, Wade,” Weasel sighed. “If I did, I’d never be able to sleep, thinking about how hard I’m going to hell.”

“But you told me to say hi to Ness!”

“I read this article about how its good to play along with Alzheimer's patients’ delusions. I thought it might be the same thing.”

“You are a _terrible_ friend.” Wade waved his crayon at Weasel threateningly. “If it wasn’t a federal crime to move a sleeping cat, I’d totally be all up in your face right now.”

“Ugh, don’t,” Weasel shuddered. “You’re hard enough to look at from this distance.”

“If you don’t start being nicer to me, I’m going to jump in front of the G train.”

“Please don’t jump in front of the G train,” Weasel said, sounding very tired. “It’s the only train less than twenty minutes away.”

“Oh, I’m _gonna_. Good luck getting places today, motherfucker.” Regenerative powers won _every_ time.

“I hate this neighborhood. Curse the seductively cheap rent.”

 

_Forty Minutes Later_

 

Wade did not actually throw himself in front of the G train. Weasel might have deserved it, but the innocent citizens of New York City did not. He went home and shot himself in the bathtub like a polite person.

The afterlife—or this very vivid hallucination, _fuck_ Weasel for putting that idea in his head—looked the same as always. Their apartment, doused in the kind of soft morning light they never really got because the buildings across the street had blocked it. They’d never gotten a lick of sunshine until ten am. 

But it was beautiful here, and the knowledge that he couldn't stay felt like a vice around Wade’s heart.

“Hey, Ness,” he said softly, sinking down to sit cross-legged on the floor. “I know it’s not time, but I have to talk to you about a thing. It’s an important thing. I even wrote down notes so I wouldn't get distracted and waste all our time together, but I guess when they say you can’t take it with you, they mean everything.”

Vanessa blinked and turned her head, the movement slowed, like she was moving through water. Her eyebrows drew together. “Wade?”

Wade swallowed. “I’m here.”

“Baby, something’s different.”

“It is? I mean, I have something more awkward than usual to talk to you about, but other than that—”

“No,” Vanessa was on her feet, walking rapidly toward Wade, “it’s—Wade, did you do something dumb? More dumb than usual? You look so—like I could—” and she was reaching out, somehow reaching _through_ , her fingers were millimeters from Wade’s face—

Wade blinked awake to the sound of his landlord banging on his door, shouting in Spanish.

“ _¡Cinco minutos!_ ” Wade yelled back, scrambling to get his handgun back under his chin. “ _¡Esto es muy importante!_ ” He pulled the trigger.

“Kittentits, what is going on?” he asked Vanessa, pushing his hand up against the barrier. She was still standing where she had been before—usually she always started in the chair, no matter what. The barrier was as solid and infuriating as ever, but something was definitely off.

“I don’t know, puppybutt, but I’m about to find out.” Vanessa had a look of intense concentration on her face, she lined her hand up with Wade’s and _pushed_. Her fingers curled through Wade’s.

“Ness, holy shit,” Wade gasped, hope rising in his throat like bile. “Pull me, pull me, pull me, _pull me_ —”

“Don’t blow your load just yet,” Vanessa said breathlessly, and pulled.

Pulled harder.

Yanked hard enough that it hurt.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Vanessa yelled at the same time Wade yelled _“monkey-fucking shit!”_. They sank to their knees together, hands clasped, balanced right on the barrier, but unable to move.

“What the fuck,” Wade whispered to her.

“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “You think you’ll get all the knowledge of the universe when you die, but it’s just like life. No one tells you shit. It’s just all these vague flashes, and you don’t even know how to interpret them.”

Wade could feel his heart lurch, trying to restart. “Babe, we don’t have much time left.”

“I know, I can feel it too,” Vanessa said. “I need you to try something real quick before you leave.”

“Anything.”

Her lips curled up. “You were always so sweet. Now, pull _me_.”

“Okay. Shit, babe, if nothing happens and I get tossed out of my apartment, I’m gonna feel so fucking dumb—” But something was happening. Wade was pulling, and he was getting somewhere. Ness laughed breathlessly as Wade backed up and he laughed with her. Then he looked down at her hand.

It was bare bone. Skeletal and horribly, irrefutably dead. He looked up and met Vanessa’s wide-eyed look with his own, and then he was back in his bathtub. Mrs. Ibanez’s angry voice in his ears, and her shotgun aimed at his head.

“ _Fuck!_ Wade shouted, so loudly that Mrs. Ibanez jumped. She rallied, shoving the shotgun back in his face. “Well, obviously _that_ isn't going to fucking do anything!” Wade yelled, gesturing emphatically with his own gun.

“ _¡Sal de mi edificio, demonio!_ ” Mrs. Ibanez yelled back. “ _¡Guardo tu depósito de seguridad!_ ”

“Well _fuck_ you too, Isadora!” Wade launched himself out of the bathtub and onto his feet. Mrs. Ibanez backed up until she hit the wall, still clutching her shotgun. “ _You_ never fixed my hot water! And I’ve had a _really_ stressful twenty-four hours, so why don’t you get off my specially-reinforced _jockstrap?_ ”

Mrs. Ibanez stuttered out something that sounded like half a prayer.

Wade threw his hands up. “You know what? I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t! I have more important things to do!” He brandished a threatening finger in Mrs. Ibanez’s face. “I don’t appreciate being made to abuse a literary device, but flash- _fucking_ -forward.”

 

_Two(ish) Days Later_

 

Wade texted Nate. He’d tried calling once, a while ago, to get Nate’s opinion on Haribo Happy Cola vs. gummy sharks, but Nate had been very confused and annoyed when he’d realized it wasn’t an emergency.

“Why the fuck would you voice call if no one is dying?” he’d asked, his voice extra growly so late at night.

“You know, I always forget you’re a later generation than me. You just look so much like someone who would still use his phone as a phone. Which Gen are you, anyway?”

“They stopped naming generations after Z. I was the generation that wasn't supposed to survive.”

“Gritty. You know, now that I think about it, it _is_ a little ominous to name a generation after the _final_ letter of the alphabet.”

“Don’t call again unless its urgent.”

“What if I just want to hear your gravely baritone?” Wade had asked.

“Come see me in person. You know where I live,” Nate’d said, and hung up.

So, now, Wade texted one handed as he swung from building to building, Spiderman style. This grappling hook was proving to be the best impulse buy _ever_ , but it was a little harder texting this way than on the train.

 _srry if i weirded u out_ , he typed. _and that i hd to leave in a hrry :(_

 _you yelled “flash-forward” and jumped out a window,_ came the reply. Wade winced. _then went off the grid for 72 hrs_

 _at least the winodw was open?_ Wade texted back, then, _kfenijn_ , as he smacked into the side of a building and nearly dropped his phone. _srry doing parkor need too find ledge to crouch dramaticallt on like batmn_

_ok?_

Wade couldn't find a ledge, so he settled on a windowsill, like a brightly-colored pigeon.

 _i swear i didnt mean thta as the hard no it probably lookd like,_ he typed, gritting his teeth against the urge to just throw his phone six stories down and hop on the next plane back to Toronto. _i panicked. then i tried to talk to my wife yes the dead one no im not jokin. pls dont b mad at me im feeling v vulnerable and you DO NOT underssand how much effort im putting into being emotionally mature rn. i need to figur some stuff out and i dont mean just emotionally becuz there is something weird gong on in the afterlife yes thats crazy talk yes im serious. it might take a little while_

Wade hit send and had a series of miniature heart-attacks as the little dots that showed Nate was typing popped up, stopped, and popped up again. How much money did Wade have in his pocket right now? If it wasn’t enough for a plane ticket, he could always jump on a bus cross-country and pick up work in LA until he had enough funds to move somewhere with real weather.

His phone vibrated. Hesitantly, he looked at the screen.

_no rush_

Wade pressed the phone against his forehead, trying not to tear up in relief. He hated LA.

It buzzed again. _contact domino when you have a minute. she wants your help on a job._

 

_The Next Day_

 

Wade was sleeping in the back of Dopinder’s cab, when a persistent tapping woke him up. He blinked awake to see an annoyed looking Domino peering in at him.

“I’ve been looking for you for days,” Domino said. “I mean, I haven’t actually been looking, I only started looking ten minutes ago, but I’ve been trying to get you to text me back for days.”

Wade tried to wave her off, but he accidentally hit the door lock with his hand, flipping it open. Domino ducked inside, nudging Wade over. Grudgingly, Wade allowed himself to be nudged. “I’ve been busy.”

“Have you?” Domino made her doubtful face.

“ _Yes._ I’ve been doing stuff _and_ things, neither of which are any of your business unless you feel like being emotionally supportive, in which case I’d very much like to tell you about them.”

“Hmm,” Domino said, “I’ll pass.” All of Wade’s friends fucking sucked. “But I do have twenty-five thousand dollars for you if you’ll do a job with me.”

“Oh?” Wade perked up. “People say money is a cold comfort, but I think they just don’t realize how many rabbit fur throws 25K can buy.”

Domino made a face. “Dude, that’s horrible.”

“Hey, you have not _lived_ until you’ve sat your bare ass on eight-hundred dollars worth of natural Havana bunny. What’s the job?”

“Ugh, ugh, ugh,” Domino punched him the shoulder in time with each “ugh”, “you’re the worst. It’s a smash and grab. You smash and I’ll grab. I need your special talent for absorbing bullets.”

“Imaginary super powers not enough?” Domino rolled her eyes. “If I’m getting twenty-five, what’s the whole job worth?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“See, that kinda makes me feel like I need to worry about it,” Wade said. “Come on, I wasn't born a mercenary yesterday. I’m not _Dopinder_. Give me forty-five.”

“The whole job’s only worth _sixty_.” Domino gave him an affronted look, like _he_ was the one trying to screw _her_

“ _Ehh,_ try again.”

“Fine, seventy-five,” Domino sighed. “But fuck you if you think I’m giving you more than thirty.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Did you not just hear me say fuck you? I’m doing the hard part, you’re just waving your guns around.” Wade crossed his arms. “ _Fine_ , asshole, thirty-two. Take it or I’ll find someone else.”

“Done!” Wade said brightly. They shook hands. “It’s always so nice seeing you, Neena. We should do brunch some time.”

“I’m free next Tuesday,” Domino said, popping open the door. She paused halfway out. “Hey, I don’t want you to take this as an invitation to tell me _anything_ personal, but you should figure out whatever’s going on with you and Cable. It’s hard to tell, but I think he’s moping.”

“Since when do you hang out with Cable?” Wade asked suspiciously.

“Since he asked me if I wanted to help sabotage some pipelines. Eco-terrorism’s fun.” She reached out and patted Wade, once, very awkwardly, on the shoulder. “Figure it out. You can come fight the Man with us next time. Meet me in front of Chelsea Market tomorrow. Bring a lot of guns.”

 

_The Next Day, With a Lot of Guns_

 

Wade waited until Domino had safely jumped out of a tenth story window and landed on a conveniently placed giant trampoline to deliberately put his head in the way of the baddies’ guns. And Nate did _not_ have a point about him letting himself get hurt, because this time was for love and science. Wade let the blackness suck him down and spit him out the other side.

Vanessa was pacing back and forth behind the barrier, her hair mussed like she’d been running her hands through it.

“Hey, I’m back,” Wade said softly. “I freaked out and went on a bender for a couple days, but I’m okay now.”

“I know,” Vanessa said. “Wade, I’ve started _knowing_ things. Before, I could follow you a little, but now… At the risk of sounding like a supervillain, I think my powers are growing.”

“Your… dead person powers?”

Vanessa shrugged, helplessly. “I guess? Maybe that’s a thing? But I know that we’ve got less than thirty seconds before your ticker starts ticking, so I think we should try that thing again where you pulled me.”

“I’ll skip the dirty joke, then,” Wade said, reaching for her. They linked hands through the barrier and Wade pulled like before, and like before, Vanessa’s arm came out skeletal and changed. Wade swallowed, tightening his grip. They managed to get her entire arm and shoulder out before something jammed, and she couldn't be pulled any farther.

“I don’t feel any different,” Vanessa said, waving her skeleton arm around, smacking Wade in the chest.

“Disagree,” Wade said, sticking his finger between her radial and ulna bones. “Definitely did not used to be able to do this.”

“Freaky.” Vanessa reached up and poked him in the nose, smiling. “Hey, baby, you wanna bone?”

“Terrible,” he told her, “I’m so proud of you. But seriously, what the hell?” He felt his heart lurch back into motion. “Oh shit, babe, I have to go.”

“ _Wait_ ,” Vanessa said, fisting her skeleton hand in the front of Wade’s shirt and Wade… stopped. Distantly, he felt his heart stutter, struggling to beat like a bird with a broken wing, never quite getting off the ground. That simile was _torturous_ , but the point was that something was keeping him under and he was pretty sure it was _Vanessa_.

“Ness, how are you _doing_ that?” 

“Don’t know—” she said, strained. “Maybe— _fuck_ , can’t keep it up. Go. Come back soon.” She let go and shoved him in the chest.

“You know _therearepillsforthat_ —” Wade said all in a rush as he flew back. The sound of her laughter echoed in his ears as he ascended.

“Shit!” Wade gasped, sitting bolt upright. The guard who had been nudging him with his gun shrieked and scrambled back.

“I need a better way to do this,” Wade told him.

 

_The Present_

 

“I feel like the whole thing got super complicated halfway through for no good reason,” Domino said. “And there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how long your conversations with your wife last, other than they all end before you can actually accomplish anything.”

“Yeah, well, it’s Marvel and there are plot requirements. But now you understand why I need to…” he held up the ouija board, wiggling it hopefully. “Please?”

“You know those things are fake, right?”

“Excuse me, you were _just_ talking about demons.”

“Yep,” Domino said, sipping the can of soda she’d wandered off to get halfway through Wade’s story. “Fake and full of demons.”

“I’ll give you money.”

“How much money?”

“Uh,” Wade pulled up his banking app real quick, “$1,506.98.”

“Hmm,” Domino said to herself, “exactly enough for that new jacket. Okay, seems like fate. I’ll do it.”

“ _Yes_.”

They set up the board on the floor, sitting cross-legged on either side, fingers on the planchette. 

“You know how to use this thing?” Domino asked, sounding ever-so-slightly nervous.

“Not really,” Wade said nonchalantly. “Hey, Ness? You here?”

There was nothing for a long moment, then the planchette twitched, making Domino yelp. Slowly, it dragged itself over to the “yes”.

“Wade?” Domino said. “Are you doing that?”

“Nope!” Wade said cheerfully. “Hey, baby, this is my second-best friend, Domino. She’s cool. Even if she tells everyone she’s a mutant.”

“I _am_ a mutant.”

“Okay, Rachel Dolezal.”

“Jesus Christ.”

The planchette moved again, a little faster this time, down to “hello”. Domino’s arm jerked and her eyes widened. “Wade, I can’t move my fucking finger, what the _fuck_ , I do _not_ like this—”

“Dom, chill,” Wade said, snickering. “Ness isn’t going to possess you, are you, babe?”

The little wooden heart picked up speed rapidly this time, zipped from letter to letter. P-R-O-B-S N-O-T L-O-L.

“I fucking hate this,” Domino muttered under her breath, “why did I say yes.”

“Okay,” Wade said, ignoring Domino’s quiet freak out, “first, I love you and miss you a whole bunch.”

U 2 B-B.

“Secondly, what the fuck? Is going on?”

T-H-I-N-K I-T M-I-G-H-T B U. T-H-I-N-K H-A-V-I-N-G U H-E-R-E G-I-V-E-S M-E P-O-W-E-R O-R S-M-T-H-I-N-G.

“That’s so fucking weird, babe, but I guess not any more far-fetched than your average Marvel plot.”

“Interjecting to say I still hate this,” Domino said.

C-O-M-E H-E-R-E, Vanessa said. T-H-I-N-K I C-A-N H-O-L-D U L-O-N-G-E-R T-H-I-S T-I-M-E.

“Oh, hell yeah, babe. One sec. Uh, goodbye, whatever, however you hang this thing up.” Wade snatched his hand back and scrambled for his gun. Domino lunged for him.

“Not on my fucking floor you asshole—”

Wade reached for Vanessa’s hand immediately as he landed in their faux-apartment, and she reached easily through the barrier, bare bone grasping his fingers and holding tight. He pulled, and she, _finally_ stepped all the way through, back… into the land of the living? Wade guessed? Or whatever weird in-between place he ended up when his heart stopped.

Her flesh vanished as she stepped through, leaving her clothes hanging loose off bare ribs. Her beautiful face faded away, too. She’d always had banging cheekbones, but they were a lot more, uh, prominent than usual.

“Babe, this is so weird,” Wade said, peering into Vanessa’s empty eye-sockets. “How do you feel? You look like a cheap Halloween decoration.”

“Thanks, Wade, you really know how to make a girl feel secure about her looks,” Vanessa snorted. “I don’t feel different. Maybe a little… looser? That doesn't make any sense. Like I can move around more easily.”

“You’re right, that doesn’t make any sense. Usually, you’re the coherent one.”

“Well, the bar was set pretty low.” If a skull’s grin could be warm, Vanessa’s was now. “What is it you keep trying to ask me about?”

“Oh, right, shit.” Wade smacked himself in the forehead. “I’ve been trying to have the same conversation with you for like ten-thousand words now. Okay, so, you know my f-word?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, one of them wants to sleep with me. And its _not_ the one you think.”

“It’s not Cable?” How could a skull give the impression of cocking a smug eyebrow?

“… Guess it was who you thought. A _little_ insulted you didn’t assume it was Domino.”

“Domino’s too cool for you.” She reached up, stroking her skeletal fingers over his eyebrow ridge. “Are you moving on from me?”

“ _Never_ ,” Wade swore, covering her hand with his own, pressing the hard edges of bone into his cheek. “You’re my forever girl, and forever’s a long time, since I’m probably immortal, and you’re _maybe_ the grim reaper now? Is that what’s happening?”

Vanessa shrugged.

Wade sucked in a breath through his nose and let it hiss out through his teeth. “I _do_ wanna bang Nate, though. Babe, you should see him, he looks even more like rough trade up close. He looks like something I picked up in the park at two am hanging out by the swing-sets. I have no _idea_ what kind of crazy, sci-fi STDs he’s carrying around in his old-man fannypack, but I wanna find out.”

Vanessa threw her head back and laughed, a black void behind her gaping teeth. “Sweetie, I think you might have a little bit of a crush.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Wade smiled helplessly. “If you’re not okay with it, though, I am ready and willing to repress the _hell_ out of that crush, no matter _what_ mean, kinda sexual names he calls me, or how big his gun is.”

“Euphemism?”

“I assume so, but the one that shoots lasers is also _massive_. I almost want to fuck it as much as him.”

Vanessa giggled as Wade pressed his forehead against hers, the bone cool against his skin. “I’m okay with it,” Vanessa whispered. “You don’t have to stop living just because I did. It might be a while until we’re together again—and I promise we _will_ be together again.”

“How do you know, Ness? What if I’m stuck like this forever; the world’s ugliest perpetual motion machine. And _what_ is happening to you?”

“I still don’t know exactly, Wade,” she said. “I’m still me, but I’m also more. Bigger. Older. And that’s how I _know_.” She pushed Wade back with surprising strength, holding him at arms length, so he had no choice but to look her right in the deathly visage. “Wade Wilson, I promise you everything dies, even the stars. You _will_ come home to me.”

He swallowed hard, nodding.

“Until then, go express your daddy issues. And visit every once in a while.”

 

_Five Minutes Of Deeply Weird Making Out Later_

 

Wade woke up in the alley behind Domino’s building, with a note stapled to his chest, cheerfully informing him that he was banned from Domino’s apartment forever. Yes, even D&D nights. He’d just have to stand in the hallway and shout.

Well, that was mildly annoying, but other than that, Wade was feeling pretty good. Surprisingly good. The pain of having to leave Vanessa again was blunted by the serene feeling of, for _once_ , knowing that something good was going to happen next. Now, all he had to do was mosey on over to Nate’s and seal the deal—

“Oh, fuck,” Wade said out loud. “I still have to talk to Nate. _Shit_.” How long had it been since that fraught series of texts? At least a week. A week of complete radio silence. Even with Wade’s little warning, that couldn't be a good look. 

Okay, so he might have to grovel a little. That was fine, Wade was fucking excellent at groveling.

He levered himself up out of the pile of garbage bags Domino had thoughtfully tossed him in, and began walking, trusting himself to come up with a suitable game plan by the time he got to Nate’s apartment.

 

_Half-an-Hour Later_

 

As always, Wade’s faith in himself was misplaced. His mind was blank and he was feeling a hell of a lot more nervous as he knocked on Nate’s door. He probably should have texted ahead to say he was coming, but he’d been worried Nate would tell him not to bother coming over. Thus, knocking, no plan, brain buzzing, door opening, oh God, he was _not_ prepared.

“Wade,” Nate said, neutrally.

“Heyyy, honeybunch,” Wade winced as the words left his mouth, “can I come in? Or should I just go throw myself in some nice, fresh cement and stay out of your hair for a few years.”

Nate was silent for a long moment, while Wade fidgeted, but then he sort of huffed to himself, and opened the door wider. “Dom says you made her apartment haunted,” he said. Wade followed him inside, nudging the door closed behind them.

“Word travels fast, huh?” Wade said, awkwardly. “Didn’t make her apartment haunted, though. Said goodbye and everything. Proper ouija board safety regulations were followed throughout the entire process.”

“A what board?” Nate toed open his fridge and grabbed two cans of the horrible, cheap beer he liked. He passed one to Wade, leaning back against the kitchen wall.

“Horror movie gimmick. Occasionally useful when you want to contact dead loved ones, but the normal brain plus bullet method isn't working.” Wade fiddled with the little tab on his beer, not opening it.

“Where have you been? Domino was looking for you a while back, said it was like you’d dropped off the face of the fucking earth.”

Wade shrugged expansively. “Here and there. Did lots of stuff. Online shopping, several kinds of drugs, bit of lead to the head. Got kicked out of my apartment, did a little black magic— _not_ directly related. Did that job with Dom. Had her help me conjure the spirit of my dead wife.”

“So, you were on a bender.” It was weird how Nate could look neither accusatory nor angry, but still make Wade feel guilty as shit.

“ _Kind_ of? It was a productive bender?”

“Right.” Okay, _that_ tone was a little judgmental. It wasn’t Wade’s fault Mrs. Ibanez didn’t appreciate the lengths a man was willing to go for true love and the chance to have sex with his hot, cyborg BFF. “You okay?”

“Oh _no_ , you really do care about me,” Wade said, then slapped his hand over his mouth because that had come out too obviously not a joke. 

“Yeah?” Nate said, sounding puzzled. Fuck, Wade should just jump out the window again. Stop being a chickenshit and _actually_ move back to Canada. Face those arrest warrants head on like a heavily armed _man_. God, it would be weird to go home now, he’d gotten so used to carrying four guns everywhere he went. Hashtag ex-pat problems.

“Hey, did you know me and Vanessa weren’t actually married long enough for me to get citizenship?” Why was his mouth doing this, he had been feeling so nice and at peace earlier. “I’ve just been living on a forged green card for fifteen years. Never even got fucking questioned. Pure racism, that. Has anyone gotten around to getting you papers yet? Because, I know a guy. The guy is Weasel. But I know him, and he can set you up with a social security number and stuff.”

“Thanks.” Nate studied him over the rim of his can. “Weird seeing you nervous.”

“Um, excuse me, fuck you, I am _not_ nervous.”

“Heh. _Yeah,_ you are.” Nate tipped his head back, draining his beer, the muscles of throat rippling in way that was neither sexy nor distracting.

“Super not. Also, I’m not drinking this. Your taste in booze is fucking awful. Do they just not have good beer in the future? Is there a second Prohibition? If there is, I’m am so sorry.”

Nate reached out a hand; Wade tossed over the unopened can. “Kind of,” he said, cracking it open, slurping at the bubbles that fizzed out. “Hard to find decent alcohol. No one’s got the time to make it. I grew up on this shit called _mir’anesh_ ,” the foreign word rolled liquidly off his tongue. “Brewed it in old rain barrels that got too rusty to collect water. It’d strip off your taste buds. Like this stuff better.”

He tossed both the empty cans at his recycling bin without looking. His left eye lit up, and the lid flipped up just in time for the cans to land inside neatly.

“Cheating,” Wade muttered. “And if I’m the nervous one, why are _you_ the one drinking?”

“I offered.”

“You offered me beer so shitty I would have been insulted if I didn’t know you genuinely _liked_ the stuff. I would quite literally rather die. Which I understand might not seem like much of a statement, coming from me, but I want you to know I feel okay about being alive today! And I would still rather die than drink _Budweiser_. That’s my hard stance and I’m not reconsidering ever.”

“You reconsidered one of my offers already today,” Nate said, one corner of his mouth curling up.

Wade pointed an angry finger at him. “I do _not_ like how good you are at steering me places conversationally. I’ll have you know most people find talking to me both incomprehensible and mildly alarming. And bold of you to assume the answer’s yes. What if I came to let you down easy? Huh? What then, Mr. Sexy Smirk?”

The sexy smirk in question was in full force. “Think you would have stayed disappeared if you didn’t want this.” Okay, accurate, but that didn’t mean Wade wasn’t going to act insulted. But oh, now Nate was pushing off the wall, slipping easily into Wade’s space.

“Hey, I _resent_ the implication that I’m not capable of mature, adult interaction—”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re capable of plenty adult interactions.” Nate was right up in his space now, and it was weird how a man four inches shorter than Wade could still give the impression of looming. Sexily. “Bet you’re a real expert.” He reached up and slowly tugged Wade’s mask out of his collar.

“Oh, God,” Wade said. “I’m so confused, yet so turned on. Are you implying that I’m a slut, or just good at sex.”

“Hmm,” Nate pulled the mask off completely. His hand came up to frame Wade’s jaw, thumb pressing down Wade’s lower lip. Wade couldn't resist licking it, tasting salt, a hint of cheap beer. “What do you think you are?” He locked eyes with Wade, gold eye just beginning to glow.

Wade sucked in a harsh breath through his nose. “I’m leaning towards slut?”

Nate grinned. His metal hand closed over Wade’s hip, hard enough that he could feel it through the armored cloth. “No need for pleasantries, then,” he said, low and rough. “Why don’t you be a good boy, shout ‘fast-forward’, and go jump in my bed.”

“Never going to live that one down, am I.”

 

_Literally Thirty Seconds Later_

 

Wade hit the bed and barely had time to bounce before Nate was on him. As it turned out, telekinesis was very handy for getting superhero costumes off fast.

Nate caught Wade’s bottom lip between his teeth, tugging before pressing in closer, sliding his tongue into Wade’s mouth. He tasted like spit—no one ever really tasted like anything but spit—and his mouth was so hot Wade felt like his brain was melting. He slipped his hands under Nate’s shirt, bunching it up, feeling the muscles of Nate’s back shift, both flesh and metal.

“Oh God,” Wade said, breaking the kiss, “you have to let me lick your metal titty, _please_.”

Nate laughed into his neck. “Fucking obsessed.” He sat back on his heels, balanced over Wade’s hips, and pulled his shirt off all the way. Wade could feel saliva pooling in his mouth.

“Well?” Nate said, sounding insufferably smug. “Come and get it.” He actually brought both of his hands up to frame his pectorals, and Wade lost his mind a little. 

Twisting like a snake, Wade flipped them both over, landing in between Nate’s spread legs. He wasted no time in burying his face right in the center of Nate’s chest with a blissful groan. He could feel the vibrations of Nate’s laughter, hear them, but he had a mission and couldn't get distracted now.

The metal was blood-warm under his mouth, like it had been under his hand, and tasted really weird, if he was being honest. Definitely not like skin, but not entirely metallic either. Somewhere in between. It was softer than true metal, too. Tougher than normal flesh, but with enough give that Wade didn’t immediately break his teeth when he took a mouthful of it and _bit_. Nate groaned above him. 

“Hey,” Wade said, “how much feeling do you have in your metal bits, anyway?”

“Sensation’s dulled a bit,” Nate replied. A flush was starting to spread high across his cheeks. “Can feel it.”

“So, about your robot dick.”

Nate snorted. “Why don’t you go ahead and see for yourself.”

“I am _so_ glad I decided to be a slut today. Kinda wish I’d worn my nice panties, though.”

“Yeah, yeah, get down there,” Nate said, shoving Wade’s shoulder impatiently. Wade got down, tugging Nate’s pants down with him.

The metal faded around Nate’s waist, then flared up again around the hip. It reminded Wade a little of tree roots digging into the ground, the way the TO burrowed in to Nate’s skin. It definitely wasn't a seamless transition.

Wade pressed his thumb into divot above a metal hipbone, marveling at the way the techno-organic flash twitched. The metal crawled over Nate’s pubic bone as well—and who would have pegged him for a manscaper? _Very_ neatly cropped down there.

Wade held his breath as he pulled Nate’s just a little farther down, enough to let Nate’s erect cock spring loose, slapping up against his stomach. And _oh_ hell yes, it had a thick vein of metal curling up one side.

“I’m so fucking happy,” Wade said, voice choked. He just barely managed to catch the flying bottle of lube before it hit him in the face.

“Enough sightseeing.” Nate slapped him lightly on the hip. “Time for you to earn your keep.”

“ _Why_ is that so hot?” Wade said, squirting lube over his fingers. He pushed his fingers inside himself, going from one to two to three a little faster than was comfortable, but Wade wasn’t feeling very patient. He rushed to balance himself over Nate’s cock.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Nate swore as Wade sank down.

“Oh, yeah,” Wade said smugly, “I’m fun-textured _all_ over.” He sighed as he pushed all the way flush. He rolled his hips in tiny circles, loosening himself up, and was pleased to find he could make Nate full-body twitch.

Wade was on the way to feeling _incredibly_ smug when Nate wrapped both his hands under Wade’s hips, and lifted him bodily, before shoving him back down, then doing it again.

“ _Shit_ , shit,” Wade gasped. “Are you fucking cheating or do you actually have—Jesus—that much upper body strength?”

Nate grinned. “Don’t worry about it.”

Wade smacked at Nate’s hands. “Come on, let me get my slut on. I don’t need your help.”

“You sure about that? Seemed like you needed a hand.”

“I know how to bounce on a cock on my own, _dad_.”

Nate grimaced, “I can’t believe I find you this hot,” but he loosened his grip, obligingly.

Free to pick his own pace, Wade picked fast. He hadn’t been lying, Wade knew how to give someone a ride in any position, but he kept getting distracted by the feel of the partially techno-organic flesh inside him. The metal had a rougher texture than the surrounding skin, boarding on uncomfortable. For Wade, though, the metal vein kept scraping right up against his happy button, and it was pushing him towards orgasm a _little_ faster than he wanted.

Wade tried counting naked Fox News pundits backwards, but Nate picked that moment to let out a little, choked moan, and then there was nothing for it.

Wade came and kept going, gritting his teeth through the oversensitivity. Below him, Nate had his eyes scrunched shut, mouth open. He looked really dumb, but also really fucking beautiful. With his stupid glowy eye, and stupid, sexy metal bits, and stupid determination to save the world, and the way he had never, never even flinched at Wade’s face, the way he rolled with Wade’s manic weirdness, laughed at Wade’s jokes, shared his terrible beer. Everything went slo-mo for a moment, and Wade was faced with the uncomfortable, mid-fuck, realization that he was in real danger of catching feelings.

Then everything sped back up and Nate was groaning and coming deep inside Wade. Wade slowed to a stop, and stripped his cock, hard and rough, until he came again with Nate still twitching inside him.

Wade listed to the side, sliding off Nate’s cock and down onto the bed. Hazily, he decided he’d just ride this wave of feel-good hormones for a while, and figure out complicated things like cleaning up and having big boy talks about expectations and emotions later.

 

_Some Time Later_

 

“So, what made you change your mind?” Nate asked. They were both sprawled out across his bed. Wade had an arm slung over Nate’s stomach, and his face buried in the pillows, and had been _about_ to fall asleep.

“Mmmph-mrph,” Wade said, then reluctantly lifted his face out of Nate’s surprisingly luxurious pillows. “Told you, had to ask Ness first. She said okay.”

“… Good?”

“No, for real.” Wade rolled over. “Look, I know that sounds crazy, but is it _really_ crazier than growing back both your legs in a day, or moving stuff with your mind? You are the _laziest_ psychic ever, by the way. The heaviest thing I’ve seen you lift with your brain is an empty beer can.” Wade paused. “Oh, wait, no, your _gun_. Literally did not make that connection until right now. I thought your gun had, like, a magnetic holster, or it was like Thor’s hammer, or something…”

Nate started stroking his fingers idly over Wade skin as he talked, and Wade found himself trailing off. It felt nice, but it was such a strange, _affectionate_ gesture. It threw Wade off his rhythm.

“Street smarts,” Wade muttered.

Nate’s fingers paused. “ _What?_ ”

“Nooo, don’t stop the petting thing.” Nate’s fingers started up again. “And don’t worry about it. Actually, don’t worry about any of it. It’ll make sense eventually.”

“Alright.” Nate sounded a little doubtful, but he let it drop. His hand dropped away again a little while later, but that was because he’d dozed off, so Wade didn’t comment.

 

_Two Weeks Later_

 

A week later, Wade was on his back, naked, enjoying the feel of the cool wood floor against his skin. The shower was running, and Wade could just barely make out the sound of Nate singing something low and rhythmic. It was pretty. Wade made a mental note to give Nate massive amounts of shit for it later.

The ceiling fan spun lazily. Wade watched it, equally lazy. He felt oddly at peace. Tired—not physically, it took a lot to make his body tired these days, but sleepy in the way you got after a day at the beach. It was probably just the lingering endorphin-high from massive amounts of hot, occasionally kinky sex, and would fade shortly, but Wade was going to savor every drop of feel-good chemicals his normally stingy brain deigned to give him.

The shower shut off, and Nate padded out a few minutes later, wearing nothing but the leopard print boxers he still didn’t seem to understand Wade had bought him ironically. They really did wonders for his ass, though. He nudged Wade in the ribs with his toes, then sidestepped neatly as Wade tried to grab his ankle.

“‘Making pancakes,” Nate said, voice still morning-scratchy.

“You know you’re really the full package. You cook, you clean, you swallow, you stab me sometimes, you sing—what was that operatic little ditty you were singing in the shower?” Wade rolled himself to his feet, and went over to sit at the end of the kitchen table, at just the right angle to watch Nate’s butt as he stood at the stove.

“Heard that?” Nate said, unconcerned, retrieving eggs from the fridge. “It’s a traditional Askani washing song. Meant to invite in the spirits of cleanliness and good health.”

“ _Really?_ ”

“No.”

Wade pouted. “That’s not nice. Relationships should be based on honesty and trust. Um, not that we’re in a relationship or anything. We just spend all our time together and fuck a lot, but it don’t mean a thing if we ain’t got that emotional swing—unless it does, but that’s a conversation we should have after the conversation I’m flailing my way like a beached fish towards right now.”

Nate hummed, cracking eggs into a bowl.

“I hope you’re listening, because I will actually be a little mad if you’re not.”

“I am.”

“Right.” Wade fidgeted, digging his thumbnail into a crack in the table. “Remember Tuesday when I tried to talk to you about a thing, but then you started kissing my neck and I got distracted?”

“Kind of.”

“Well, let me refresh everyone’s memories—”

 

_Three Days Ago_

 

“Hey, remember when I mentioned some stuff about my dead wife, and the afterlife, and things?” Wade asked. Nate, who was in the middle of stripping Wade out of his suit, paused.

“Yes?”

“Well, I’d meant to talk to you about it before we did the nasty the first time,” Nate unpaused, undoing Wade’s many zippers, “but you’re _surprisingly_ fucking smooth sometimes, and really good at, like, gently steamrolling me? Sexually? It’s hot, but makes it hard to bring things up.” Wade lifted his arms, letting Nate strip off the top half of his costume. “Like right now for instance. I’m trying to talk to you about a thing.”

“Can it wait until later?” Nate asked, running his hands up Wade’s sides, fingers not rough, exactly, but firm. It felt nice. Having someone who wasn’t even a little weirded out by his bumpy, gnarled disaster of a top coat was nice.

“Um…” Wade hesitated. Nate’s mouth followed his hands, nipping, licking, and biting his way up Wade’s chest. 

“Been wanting to touch you since you pistol-whipped that guy to death with his own gun,” Nate growled into Wade’s neck. “That was so fucking hot.” _That_ had been earlier, when he, Nate, and Domino had been trying to take some important thing from some unimportant guys for some very important reason. The details were escaping Wade at the moment.

“That was pretty fucking cool, wasn't it,” Wade said, breathlessly, “but, really, I _just_ remembered. If we don’t talk about it now, I’ll forget again. My memory’s kinda ehhh,” he wobbled a hand, “most days.”

Nate pressed a sucking, biting kiss into the side of his neck. He pulled back, watching the mark fade. He liked doing that, seeing how quickly Wade’s body bounced back to normal. He caught Wade’s eyes.

“Leave yourself a note,” Nate said, and dropped to his knees.

“Oh, fuck, good argument.” Wade bit his knuckles as Nate opened up his pants, drawing his cock out. “Fuuuck,” Wade groaned as he swallowed him all the way down. “Really good argument.”

 

_The Present_

 

“Anyway, I found this,” Wade said, waving the rather battered pink sticky note. It said _Tell Nate Ness is the grim reaper!!_ in a hurried scrawl, with a little skull doodled in one corner.

Nate stopped mixing ingredients to squint at him. “You’re completely naked, where were you keeping that?”

“A place. Look, we need to capital T _talk_. And no distracting me with your sexual wiles this time!”

Nate’s lips thinned. He switched the stove on, putting butter in the pan. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Uh, about the stuff I was doing when I disappeared for week.” Wade paused, breathing in. “I didn’t just ghost because I freaked out—although, I will admit that it was a _little_ bit that—but all that crazy weird stuff I told you about my wife and the afterlife and stuff? I wasn’t just making that up—”

“I know,” Nate said.

“—even though it must have sounded—wait, you do?”

The batter hit the pan with a loud sizzle; Nate raised his voice to be heard over it. “Your friend Weasel told me. Left me a really incoherent voicemail. Something about Alzheimer's patients, how you thought your dead wife was talking to you, and how I should fuck you so you’d stop breaking into his apartment.”

“That little _rat_ ,” Wade said, admiringly. “His nickname’s not Weasel anymore, it’s Rat. Not a cool rat like pizza rat, or the one with the chip bag, either, just a common subway rat. I’m going to text him right now and tell him. Where’s my phone.”

“Still in the bedroom.” Nate flipped the first pancake. He did it the cool Food Network way, too, without a spatula.

“I’m going to text him right after breakfast and tell him,” Wade said, settling back in. “Um, so,” he said awkwardly, “should just jump into it, I guess. Me and Ness always had an openish relationship, which I guess is even more open now that she’s chilling in, like, the Astral Plane, while I’m stuck in Faerun.”

“I don’t know what any of that means.” Nate slid a plate of perfect, fluffy pancakes in front of him, and sat down at the table.

“Thanks. See, you _would_ have understood that one if you’d agreed to come to game night with us. Seriously, you’d like it. Yukio plays the _cutest_ little halfling rouge—”

“Wade.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Wade said, clasping his hands in front of himself, like maybe if he could keep his hands from fidgeting, he could keep his brain on track. “I don’t have any way to prove that I actually talk to Ness every time my heart stops, and I guess, ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not—although _Dom_ totally fucking believes me now, after the ouija board thing. And it kind of sucks if you just think I’m crazy, because I’m _pretty_ sure it’s not all in my head. Not 100%, but like 85% sure.

“The point is Ness is okay with with this whole,” Wade gestures between them, “thing. But if we’re going to get all _emotiony_ , which I _think_ we will _eventually_ , judging from our current trajectory…?” Wade trailed off, wincing. He snuck a glance at Nate, who looked nonplussed, but not angry, or even especially annoyed.

“Yeah,” Nate paused for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing. “Yeah, probably. I’m fine with that.” He looked back at Wade. “Are you?”

“You know, I _hate_ how casually in touch with your emotions you are. It really doesn’t jive with the outward image you project. My point, my point is,” he waved Nate, who had opened his mouth, off, “my point is I don’t know, but whatever does happen? I’m still with Vanessa. That's not over. That doesn't stop me from doing whatever it is we’re doing, however we end up doing it, but I’m still married. And it’s just, um…” Wade twisted his hands together, where they rested on the table. “It’s important to me that you understand that.”

There was a long moment of silence, where Wade considered very seriously jumping out the window again.

“You know,” Nate said slowly, “where I come from, monogamy isn't standard.”

Wade looked up cautiously. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Nate smiled at him, rueful, gentle. “We don’t have all these fucking weird, perverted rituals surrounding relationships, the way you people do. No one has the time. I had a few different people I slept with. So did Aliya. Me and her had a kid together, though, decided to live together. One day we were sitting, a little like this, and she asked me if I wanted to be married.”

“Oh.”

Nate swallowed, swirling his glass of orange juice. “She’s not even fucking born yet. That’s what gets me if I think about it too long. She’s not even dead, she doesn’t fucking exist. Won’t until I’m long gone myself.”

“Oof,” Wade said. “ _There’s_ that survivor’s guilt, was wondering where it’d gone off to. Regretting wasting your trip home on me, yet?”

Nate shook his head. “Keep telling you, I already wasn’t planning on going back. I can’t let my daughter grow up in the radioactive shithole this world becomes.” He caught Wade’s eye. “Even if I had, it wouldn’t’ve been a waste.”

“Thanks,” Wade said, a little choked. He blinked rapidly, because it was kinda dusty in Nate’s apartment and no other reason. “We should probably eat, right? Before the pancakes get cold.

“They’re already cold.”

“We’ll just stick them in the microwave.”

“You can’t put pancakes in the fucking _microwave_.”

“Are we boyfriends, now?” Wade asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

The corner of Nate’s mouth quirked up. “Looks like it.”

 

_Twelve Hours Later_

 

“ _Jesus_ fucking Christ,” Weasel gasped as the lights flicked on. He dropped his shopping bags, cans rolling across the floor. “Wade, for fuck’s sake.”

“What’s with all the soup cans, buddy?” Wade said, slowly rotating back and forth in the high-backed office chair he’d dragged into Weasel’s living room expressly for this purpose. In his lap, Impurrator Furiosa rumbled happily as he scratched her ears. “We channeling our inner Ted Cruz?”

“Don’t,” Weasel extended a shaking finger towards Wade, “compare me to that man.” He bent down to gather up his groceries. “I would never tie a dog to the roof of a car.”

“Think you’re thinking of Mitt Romney. Maybe Rand Paul?”

“They’re all the same man, Wade,” Weasel said grimly. He tried to walk past Wade’s chair, into the kitchen, but Wade scooted in front of him, blocking his way. Weasel sighed. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Wade said casually. “Just thought you’d be interested to know that me and Cable hooked up. Repeatedly. Not showing any signs of stopping. It was actually a struggle to find time to come see you in between all the _dick_ I’m getting.”

“Congratulations,” Weasel said, sounding very tired. He tried to walk around Wade again, but Wade stood up, still holding Impurrator Furiosa. He planted himself squarely in Weasel’s way, using the couple inches he had on him to full advantage. Weasel’s eyes actually widened a little, as Wade leaned in.

“I just wanted you to know,” Wade said, low, “that no matter busy I am shacking up with my new cyberpunk leather-daddy boyfriend— _yeah,_ it’s official—I will _always_ have time for you.”

Very slowly, Wade bent forward and placed a soft kiss right on top of Impurrator Furiosa’s fuzzy little head.

 

_One Month Later_

 

Wade still went to see Vanessa whenever he could. Nate looked unhappy sometimes when he came home to find Wade scrubbing his own brains off their bathroom floor, but Wade was pretty sure he mentally classified it as “fucked up coping mechanism”. If it was harder to find time alone to quickly off himself these days? Well, that was the price of living with other people.

She was still discovering new powers every day it seemed. She could venture out on her own now, although, she told him, no one could see her.

“I’m always like this too,” she said, gesturing at her bare skull. “It’s weird, but it kind of appeals to my inner thirteen-year-old goth.”

“Well, you always did have great bone structure, babe,” Wade said.

“Mmm,” she’d really mastered the art of smiling without lips at this point, “thank you, sweetie. I feel like I’m in the tutorial part of a video game, but it’s one of those games where they don’t give you any instructions, and you have to figure out the buttons all on your own.”

Time wasn’t an issue anymore. Vanessa could hold him under pretty much as long as she liked—which was never as long as _Wade_ would have liked, but blah blah, cosmic plan, time for everything, etc. It was nice, though, being able to hold her hand. Even if her hand was a skeleton. Even if it freaked his friends out when he was gone for twenty, thirty minutes, instead of five.

“—and Nate is convinced my healing factor is weakening,” Wade said. “He actually _pushed me_ out of the way of a grenade the other day. Romantic? Condescending? The line is so thin sometimes.”

“Well, I think it’s sweet,” Vanessa said, and she sounded thoughtful. “You better get back to your boyfriend. Don’t want him to worry. Give me a little sugar before you go—I wanna try something later.”

“Are we really sure its me revving up your supernatural engines?” He asked, leaning in to press a kiss against her bare teeth.

“Still the best theory we’ve got,” Vanessa said, nipping him. “Say hi to everyone.” And she pushed him back and up.

Wade woke up to find someone had already undone the noose, and laid him out across the bed. Wade rubbed at his neck, which was a smooth as it ever got, and poked, annoyed, and his death boner. That was why he preferred guns, but he had a scrupulously neat cyborg to contend with now. So. Compromise.

The sounds of someone filling the dishwasher drifted in. Eventually, Wade got up and padded out of the bathroom.

“Hey sexy,” he called, “you saw my note, right?” He’d left a torn-off scrap of notebook paper taped to the front door, _hanging from the bedroom ceiling brb in 20 min_.

“Yeah,” Nate said, shutting the dishwasher. “Wasn’t as long this time. Maybe quarter hour.”

Wade hoped up on the kitchen counter, swinging his legs. “Told Ness it was worrying you,” he said, watching the lines of Nate’s shoulders go tense. Tenser.

See, he _knew_ Nate didn't fucking believe him, even with all the weird things he couldn't explain. He thought Wade offing himself every once in a while was just an extension of the self-harm habit they were all convinced Wade had—and _maybe_ there was something there, but they didn’t know. He could just be an adrenaline junkie.

 _Domino_ believed him, kinda, which is why she was currently his favorite member of X-Force.

“She says hi,” Wade said, because pushing it was his default. Nate closed his eyes, and Wade felt a bad even though he _shouldn’t have_. “So… you, me, and Dom hitting that tech company?”

“Tomorrow,” Nate said, gruff. “We have the blueprints we need.” The target was some high-tech weapons prototype, that would apparently be used to slaughter millions of people in Nate’s future. Nate and Domino were planning on destroying it, along with all records of it, and Wade was tagging along because he was a supportive boyfriend.

Nate continued to putter around the kitchen, obviously unhappy.

“Hey,” Wade said, holding out a hand, “I’m fine. Come here.”

Nate stepped in between his legs, and Wade pulled him in to a deep kiss. Nate relaxed into it, which meant Wade’s distraction technique was working perfectly. 

Breaking the kiss, Nate leaned back a bit, studying Wade silently. Wade cringed internally, waiting for whatever he was about to say.

“It’s fucked up, coming home to that,” Nate said eventually, stroking his thumb over Wade’s jawline. He didn’t sound accusatory, exactly, which is why Wade stayed still instead of making a run for it. Kinda melancholy.

“Yeah, I know,” Wade said. “I could… I mean, I’m not going to _stop_ , but I could go somewhere else when the gotta-die itch gets really strong. Find a nice, abandoned warehouse by the peer. Maybe under a bridge somewhere. _Ooh_ , the office of one of our local government officials. Whoever’s in charge of the _fucking_ subways, because if there’s _anyone_ who deserves to have blood all over their carpet—”

Nate grimaced. “Not sure I like the idea of you leaving yourself vulnerable like that.”

“Well, it’s not like I have anyone specific gunning for me.”

“You piss off every person you meet.”

“ _Yeah,_ but no one _specific_.”

Rolling his eyes, Nate let it drop. Compromise. It was a little weird to have a relationship full of so much compromise. Wade put dishes in the dishwasher instead of the sink because he knew he’d forget to wash them, Nate tolerated Wade’s hoarding as long as he kept all the really useless (cool) junk in the second bedroom, and Wade didn’t tease him about his gun fetish. It was new. Except for one very notable exception, he and Ness had always been on the same page. Usually the same word of the same line.

 _God,_ he missed having his brain twin. But there was one upside to all this, he’d discovered: mature, adult compromise made him incredibly horny.

“This has been a very productive dialogue, I think,” Wade said in his best seductive voice. Nate, who knew about his adulting fetish, snorted. “So, you wanna—”

“Do you want to fuck me on the couch?” Nate asked. He took a step back, tilting his hips slightly, letting Wade get a good look at his… everything. Muscle, the angry, pink places where flesh transitioned to metal, the rippling curves of the T.O. itself. God, Nate had the best body. He’d even developed a slight softness in the stomach, now that he lived in century where food was readily available, and Wade was _absolutely_ crazy about the squish.

“Yes—” Wade’s tongue tripped over itself “—yeah, _shit_ , yes.”

Smirking, Nate grabbed Wade’s wrists, tugging him down off the counter. Wade let himself be led back into the living room, and down on the couch, landing mostly on top of Nate.

It still weirded Wade out sometimes, to have someone touch his bare skin, especially after the years he spent alone, sleeping in the mask. But this was alright, he thought as Nate raked the fingers of his metal hand down his back. He never felt like a freak being naked around Nate.

He pressed a kiss against Nate’s jaw, then his neck, mouthing at the seam where the metal dug in. Wade smiled to himself, smugly, as Nate’s breathing sped up. He continued kissing down Nate’s chest, pausing to blow a raspberry right between his pecs.

Nate smacked him upside the head for that, but lightly. “Asshole,” laughed. Wade stuck his tongue out at him.

He leaned back, pulling down Nate’s boxers. Nate arched helpfully. 

Wade ran his hands up Nate’s thighs, enjoying the contrast in textures. The T.O. flesh twitched just like the regular stuff, though, when he dug his thumbs into the creases of Nate’s hips.

“Mm, yeah,” Wade hummed. He pushed up one of Nate’s legs, bracing it against his shoulder, and dived right in.

Nate gasped at the first touch of Wade’s lips on his cock, hips jerking helplessly. Wade braced his forearm across Nate’s stomach, keeping him still as he traced the veins of metal running across the base of Nate’s cock with his tongue. This was always fun, but Wade had a goal in mind. 

But first, he couldn't resist taking Nate’s balls into his mouth, just to hear him choke on spit. Every time. Pure gold. 

He pushed Nate’s leg back further, getting his shoulder under the other one and his hands under Nate’s ass, tilting his pelvis up. Nate might have been a buff boy, but Wade had the kind of forearm strength that was the envy of washerwoman everywhere. If washerwoman was still a profession.

Using his thumbs, he spread Nate open, getting a good look at his twitching hole, before diving in face first.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Nate barked. One of his heels thumped against Wade’s back. Wade giggled, swirling his tongue, knowing the vibrations would just make it better. Nate groaned garbles curses, and Wade could hear his head thunk back into the arm of the couch.

“Jesus, come on, _fuck_ me,” Nate growled. Out of the corner of his eye, Wade saw Nate’s golden eye light up, then there was a crash from somewhere else in the apartment, then Wade’s extra-special bottle of Bubblegum Blast flavored lube was flying towards the couch. It smacked Wade directly in the face.

“Hey,” Wade said, rubbing his forehead against Nate’s knee. “Mean.”

Nate smirked, completely unrepentant. Wade pinched him on the inner thigh as punishment, but got on with squirting pink-tinted lube over his fingers. Slowly, he let a finger sink into Nate. He was always so tight at first.

“Falling asleep, here, sweetheart.” Tight and _impatient_

“Fine, fine, keep your metaphorical panties on,” Wade muttered, pushing a second finger in. He twisted his wrist, wiggling his fingers around until he felt Nate loosen.

He pulled his hand free and balanced on his heels, Nate’s legs still over his shoulders. He pushed in slowly, watching Nate’s face, watching him throw his head back, mouth open in a gasp. Completely shameless. In the sense of not having any of the weird hang ups most super butch men Wade knew had about being bent in half and fucked.

Oh, and Nate could _bend_. He was surprisingly spry for a man his age, who was half scar tissue and half metal. Wade folded him up tighter, leaning in to catch his lips in a sloppy kiss. Nate moaned into his mouth.

“You know my tongue was just up your butthole, right?” Wade said, breaking the kiss.

“I will fucking _headbutt_ you.”

Wade laughed, and put his back into it. Nate was tight, and hot, and drove him crazy constantly, but _especially_ right now. The flush spreading across the flesh part of his chest was so hot, and the metal hand clamped over the back of Wade’s neck was so _fucking_ hot, and the sweat beginning to make Nate’s hair clump was so hot, and the way the glow in his eye flickered on and off and—

“Am I talking out loud right now?” Wade panted.

Nate grinned. “Yep.”

“Fuck, um,” Wade was having trouble keeping his thoughts in order, sex making his normally addled mind even more addled, “well, I meant all of that, but let's pretend I peppered in some mildly distasteful jokes to make it sound less like a cheesy fucking romance novel.”

Nate actually _booped_ him. On the fucking nose. “You’re cute.”

“And you are the _only_ person capable of being condescending while getting pounded in the ass. I am going to make you come so hard you black _out_ , Nate. See how fucking smug you are with my come dripping out your—”

Nate cut him off with a kiss. Wade gave up trying to talk through it, and concentrating on giving Nate exactly what he deserved: an pointed orgasm. Wade managed to wriggle his hand between them, so he could strip Nate’s cock in time with his thrusts. He nipped at Nate’s lips, drinking in his noises.

Nate came with a ragged moan, striping both their stomachs. Wade held on for another thirty seconds, the followed, burying himself as deep inside Nate as he would go.

Wade collapsed on top of Nate, his softening cock slipping out. _That_ was going to leave a stain on the couch later.

“Ha,” Wade mumbled into Nate’s sweaty chest, “I win.”

 

_That Night_

 

Wade slept well, but weirdly. Vanessa came to him in his dreams, dressed in a flowing black robe. She had her real face, though, beautiful and alive looking. Painted in heavy black and white Halloween makeup, like a skull.

“That’s racist, babe,” Wade said, reaching up to stroke her cheek.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m half Mexican, Wade, you know that. This isn't even sugar skull makeup.”

“Is this the thing you wanted to try earlier?”

“Dream-walking? Yep. Seems to be working, too. I’m pretty happy with it.”

“You’re doing great, babe,” Wade said, feeling proud.

“Thanks, baby,” Vanessa smiled, her nose scrunching up. “I have a thing I need you to remember. Can you do that for me?”

“Of course.”

“Look,” and she drew a strange, twisting symbol in the air, “and _remember what I say onto you_ ,” and something in the suddenly odd cadence of her voice made Wade sure he _would_ actually remember. “I need you to draw this sigil in fresh blood, ideally human, but you can use a pigeon or something in a pinch.”

“This looks a little like dark magic, Ness,” Wade said.

“Mmm-hm,” Vanessa hummed, “that’s because it is. I literally just learned about this, but I’m pretty sure it’ll allow me to manifest in the world of the living.”

“Oh,” Wade said. “Well, fuck yeah, then, I’m so totally in. Do I have to do a creepy chant? Light some candles? Make a weird statue out of teeth?”

“Nope. Just the blood and the sigil. See you soon, Wade. Love you.”

 

_The Next Day_

 

The thing was, Wade woke up remembering every second of that dream.

The job that day went remarkably smoothly. Which meant there were only twice as many guys as they expected, and the prototype itself was in the third secret basement instead of, like, the fourteenth. In the end, they ended up in the factory district, debriefing while the tech company’s former HQ burned in the backdrop.

Domino and Nate were examining the prototype, talking in low voices. Wade had already tuned out. They seemed to have everything handled. He eyed the still wet blood that liberally coated his suit, and the tantalizingly graffiti-free patch of wall in front of him.

It was Domino who clocked him first. “Wade?” he heard her call out. “Wade, what are you doing? Is that some fucking black magic bullshit, because I _told_ you no more demon shit after the last time—”

Her footsteps were approaching, but she had not time to pull him away, because once he finished drawing the sigil, the effect was _instantaneous_. Black flames burst out of the lines of blood, expanding to form a doorway.

Out stepped Vanessa in full grim-reaper, flowing black robe, bare skull regalia.

“Oh shit, that worked!” Wade yelled, and rushed to sweep her up in a, pokey, hug. She was wonderfully solid. If bony.

Wade pulled back, grinning from ear to ear. Together, he and Vanessa turned to look at his friends. Both of who were standing stock still, staring.

Vanessa turned her empty eye sockets to Domino, giving her a little wave. “Hey,” she said, “we’ve met already. Kind of.” Hesitantly, Domino waved back.

“So, _you both can see her, right?_ ” Wade said. “Just _gotta_ establish that before we get any further into introductions.”

Slowly, both Domino and Nate nodded.

“Yes! Not completely crazy!” Wade fist-pumped. “Nate, this is my wife, Vanessa. She used to have skin and stuff…” he trailed off. Nate was wide eyed, surprised, but there was a look of _recognition_ on his face.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said, almost a whisper.

“You have?” Vanessa cocked her head.

“A thousand times on the battlefield,” Nate said, grimly, and it was a little unfair that Wade found someone _so_ dramatic _so_ hot. “And once in my own home.”

“Some of that hasn’t happened yet,” Vanessa said. “And some of it never will. You saw to that. Perhaps, you’ll see to all of it, and there will be no battlefields for me to walk. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“Yes?”

“Hey,” Vanessa tapped her finger against her jaw, “what do you guys call me? In the future.”

“Mistress Death.”

“Hm, dominatrixy,” she said, and she tilted her head in way Wade knew meant she was smiling. “I like it.”

 

_Ten Minutes Later_

 

The first thing Domino did, after Vanessa had said her goodbyes, and gone off to deal with dead people business, was punch Wade in the face and stomp off. 

“ _Ah_ ,” Wade hissed, clutching his nose. 

“I can’t believe your wife is the fucking angel of death,” Nate said, dragging his hand over his face. “Figures. If anyone would marry the personification of the final fucking end, it’d be you.”

“I mean, she was a normal human when we got married. Not even a mutant in this continuity. I think. Hey, does _she_ remind you of your wife? People used to always say we were basically the same person. And by people, I mean Weasel. And what he really said was ‘God, I hate so much that there are two of you’—”

“Not as much,” Nate said, sounding a little wistful. “Your girl’s too grounded. Aliya always had a manic edge. Always moving, talking, fighting. Keeping herself busy so she wouldn’t have to think.”

Wade shifted uncomfortably. There were times when he didn’t entirely believe that Nate couldn't read his mind.

“It’s called empathy, Wade.”

“ _Is_ it? Because I’m pretty sure I didn’t say any of that out loud.”

“You make this face when you’re trying to figure out if I’m in your head,” Nate said. “I never am. Even if I could, I wouldn't.”

“Yeah, that’s valid, don’t much like being in here either.”

“Not that,” Nate said. “Respect your privacy.”

Wade swallowed down the wave of mushy feelings trying to crawl up his throat, like creepy feelings spiders. “Cool,” he choked.

Nate rolled his eyes. “I like her, your wife. Glad I got to meet her.”

“Me too,” Wade said. “So… relieved I’m not totally crazy? Because, let me tell you, _I_ sure am.”

“I was fine with the way you were,” Nate said, grabbing Wade’s wrist and towing him towards where probably at least one of their super cool X-Force motorbikes was still parked. “Just gained some context.”

Dammit, there were those feelings again. “Oh hey, now I can invite Ness over for tea the old-fashioned way—via dark rituals—so, no more blood and guts on your nice bathroom floor.”

“Our nice bathroom floor,” Nate corrected absently, fishing out his keys. “We need to find out where Dom went. She took the prototype with her.”

“ _Oh,_ I don’t think we’ll have much trouble finding her. I have a feeling things are going to starting looking up. Easy going, smooth sailing, all properly lubricated, etc.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nate looked back over his shoulder, quirking a smile. He climbed onto his bike, pulling Wade on behind him.

“Baby,” Wade said, in the most dramatic voice he could manage, wrapping his arms around Nate’s waist, “the road’s nothing but sunshine, lollipops, and world domination from here. And maybe a little black magic. But that’s it, folks! Happy ending! It’s done! Pull down the curtain, close the book, click out the webpage. We’re riding off into the sunset, so roll them credits, and don’t forget to tip your… concession stand… people. Look, is there anyone in a theater you’re supposed to tip, because I’ve honestly never been sure—”

 

_Happily Ever After_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the kinkmeme! You’re the reason I got this whole thing written in less than a month. 
> 
> Come hang out with me on  tumblr 


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote an epilogue because I'm a fucking nerd who wanted Nate and Vanessa to talk more.

_After Happily Ever After_

 

Wade came home to a find the world’s awkwardest tea party underway in his kitchen.

It was a strange tableau. Nate sat at one end of the kitchen table, posture carefully relaxed in that way that meant he was secretly nervous as hell. Vanessa sat at the other end, legs crossed under her flowing, black robe. Her posture was calm and casual, in the way that meant internally she was laughing her head off. They both had steaming mugs. Vanessa’s sigil was drying on a piece of cardboard leaning against the wall. 

“Guys, come on,” Wade said, setting his shopping bags down on the counter, “I already played us out. What’s all this?”

“Wanted to talk,” Nate, who was apparently comfortable performing black magic by himself, shrugged.

“Mmm.” Vanessa tilted her mug against her mouth. The tea dribbled through her teeth and down her jawbone. “It’s okay, baby, we’re just trading mean gossip about you.”

“Did you tell him about the time the dryer ate my Special Princess Pony t-shirt and I cried?” Wade asked, moving to press a kiss against Vanessa’s forehead. Then he skipped to the other end of the table to give Nate one too, so he wouldn't feel left out.

“Of course. And the time you got your dick stuck in a pumpkin.”

“It was a very sexy jack-o-lantern,” Wade explained to Nate, who was starting to look very confused. “The eye holes were _just_ the right size, and all that candy had really put me in the mood. You know how a man gets.”

“I was standing right there,” Vanessa chimed in, “wearing this _really_ sexy wolf costume—”

“—I was Little Red Riding Hood—”

“—and yet he decided he wanted to fuck the pumpkin. Took him about two minutes to get his cock just _jammed_ in there. Had to cut him out with the carving knife.”

“Did not lose my erection _at all_ ,” Wade said proudly. “That was before I had my awesome superpowers too.”

“Back before we got married,” Vanessa nodded. “Before he disappeared for two years and let me think he was dead.” Wade winced, glancing at Nate, who he had maybe never mentioned that to, but Nate was looking at Vanessa. One of his eyebrows twitched up; a question. Vanessa took it as her queue to ruthlessly elaborate. “He was on some self-sacrificing bullshit and didn’t want me to watch him die. Thought signing himself up for shady medical experiments was a better idea—he gets some real dumbass notions sometimes, so be prepared for that.”

Nate snorted. “I know.”

Vanessa giggled. 

“It worked out in the end!” Wade protested, pouting. He pulled out a chair in the middle, seating himself in the middle between two of them. It felt right. Lucky Pierre had always been his favorite position, even if all he was getting double-teamed with right now was judgment for his admittedly poor life choices. “Now no one has to watch me die, potentially ever?”

“I guess,” Vanessa said thoughtfully. “Although, _I_ ended up being the one who kicked it, funny how things work out.” She cocked her head. “I _also_ got super powers out of my thing, now that I’m thinking about it. Do you guys wanna see what I just learned to do?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Wade said at the same time Nate said “alright” with a certain amount of wariness.

Vanessa rapped the tips of her fingers against the table. A cockroach scuttled out from under the fridge and across the kitchen floor, towards them.

“For fuck’s sake,” Nate swore, “I just put out traps.” He tried to stomp on the cockroach as it ran past, but it dodged his boot and climbed up the table leg, not stopping until it stood just in front of Vanessa’s hand, antennae quivering.

“So you did,” Vanessa hummed. “This gross little moron was just about to fall for one, but I needed to borrow him. Look.” She tapped the cockroach on the back and it immediately curled up, dead.

“Bug insta-kill?” Wade said. “Babe, that’s so fucking cool.”

“Not just that.” She tapped the cockroach again, and it reanimated, scuttling around in a little circle.

“Whaaaat,” Wade breathed. “ _Wait_ , does that work on _people?_ ” He shoved his arm towards her. “Do me, do me, do me, do me.”

“Don’t—” Nate was saying, but Vanessa was already laying her hand over Wade’s. The world blinked out.

Wade was back in their apartment, but alone. Without Vanessa there, the place looked a lot less inviting. Lonely, a little darker. Wade didn’t like it.

But he didn’t get much time to look. Just a couple of split seconds before he was awakening slumped over the table, face to face with the cockroach. It wiggled its antennae at him. Vanessa’s boney finger came down on it, pressing until its carapace buckled, and it once again fell limp. 

“—only for a few seconds,” Vanessa was saying. “Look, he’s fine. It’s cool. He’s back.” She sounded defensive.

“Muh?” Wade pushed himself back upright. Nate was glowering and Vanessa had her arms crossed. “Wait, are you guys fighting? Don’t do that! Go back to trading embarrassing stories about me. Nate, tell her about the time I jumped out a window because I couldn’t deal with you hitting on me—”

“It’s fine,” Nate said, which just made Wade feel worse because it obviously wasn’t, and it was all because he’d got excited and forgot he wasn’t allowed to die in the house anymore. _Stupid_.

“It’s not your fault,” Vanessa said, already sensing Wade’s mood dip. Her face tilted towards Nate, and she paused for a long moment. “I’m… sorry,” she said, and Wade could almost see her grimace—she’d always hated apologizing. “Things seem like less of a big deal to me now. I’m starting to forget how fucked up and scary everything is for humans.”

Nate nodded, his shoulders slowly relaxing. “So,” he said, mildly, “what the fuck are you? Never knew if you were a devil or an angel or something completely different.”

“Ever read Discworld?”

“No.”

“Oh, um,” Vanessa said. “Damn, this is going to be much harder to explain without mutual cultural touchstones—I’m a metaphor, basically. Kind of. Not really, but that’s the simplest way I can think of explaining it. I’m… responsible for everything that dies. That’s my job. But it’s not a job, exactly, its more like a function?” She threw up her hands. “Jesus, you become the avatar of cosmic decay and you can’t even fucking use words anymore. Did any of that make sense?”

“Not even a little,” the corner of Nate’s mouth twitched up, “but I think I get it.”

That was good; they weren’t bristling at each other anymore, but Wade still felt wigged out and weird. It was like a feeling of unease had followed him back from the afterlife. And damn, Wade hated seeing the two people he loved most in the world glare at each other like two pigeons preparing to throw down over a water-logged chicken nugget—

—Wait, was he in love with Nate? When had that happened.

“Like a month ago, Wade. Keep up,” Vanessa said. She reached out and stroked her knuckles lightly over the side of his neck. “What’s got you feeling weird? This happens, sometimes.” That last part was directed at Nate. “Something’ll catch him at a weird angle and his brain’ll go all—” she made a thumbs-down gesture. “ _Sometimes_ —well, a lot of the time—he’s just forgotten to eat. Sometimes he needs to be distracted. Or to talk about it. You kinda have to go down the list.”

“Yeah,” Nate said slowly, “thanks. Thank you, that’s good to know.”

“Hey,” Wade whined, “stop talking about me like I’m an elderly chihuahua and you want to make sure the dog-sitter gives me my kidney medication and stops me from pissing on the antique, Victorian settee.”

“That’s very specific,” Vanessa snorted, then softened. “I just want to make sure you’re okay, now that I’m not around anymore.”

“You’re around,” Wade said, voice rising. “You’re here right now.”

“Yeah, yeah _shit_ , baby, sorry, I phrased that wrong. Um,” her head swiveled, looking past Wade into the leaving room, “here, let’s move somewhere more comfy. Up, up.” She stood, pulling Wade along with her, still unnaturally strong. “Nate, you too, come on. We’re going to the couch.”

In short order, she had the three of them arranged on the couch. Wade tucked into Nate’s chest, and Vanessa on his other side, legs tangled in his. Her robe had a strange texture, and no matter how hard Wade rubbed it between his fingers, he couldn't tell if it was coarse or soft. Her legs weighed nothing at all.

Nate’s fingers stroked over the back of his head, while Vanessa’s finger bones curled loosely around his wrist.

“What’s got you fucked up?” Nate asked, low.

Wade struggled for a long moment to find the right words. “The place I go—when my brain goes splat, or I get fucked to death by Juggernaut, or whatever—it’s usually really fucking nice, yeah? Peaceful. And she’s there.” He nudged Vanessa with his shoulder. “This time it wasn’t. It was really fucking _un_ nice, babe,” he said to Vanessa. “It was cold, and dark—I mean, it wasn’t, but it _felt_ cold and dark, and I didn’t want to stay. That’s the first time I haven’t wanted to stay.” Wade shrugged, curling in tighter to Nate’s chest, trying to absorb the warmth. “I don’t know, it just wigged me out.”

“Why?” Vanessa pushed, gently.

The words forced themselves out, leaving the sour taste of fear in Wade’s mouth, “Because what if I’m alone when I die? What if I finally kick it, and it’s just me? Trapped by my-fucking-self for all of forever?”

“Wade,” Vanessa grabbed him by the chin, turning him to face her. Her empty eye sockets bored into him, “you won’t be. You’ll be with me.”

“Promise?”

She booped him on the nose. “You’ll sit at my right hand at the end of all things. You can eat me out as the stars go dark, one by one. We’ll cuddle as the whole Universe freezes over. Like during that blizzard when the power went out, and we took every blanket in the apartment and made a big, fluffy, fuck nest on top of the couch—but forever. Do you remember that? It wasn’t that long ago.”

“A year,” Wade said, hoarse. “Just a fucking year.”

“Yeah…” Vanessa sighed. “So much has happened. Hey, Nate?” She leaned around Wade to get a better look at him. “You’re invited too, you know. Even with you fucking the timeline in the ass every chance you get, you won’t survive the end. You could hang out with us.” She gestured to her face. “I promise I look a lot more appealing to dead people.”

Wade twisted to get a look at Nate’s face. He looked lost and a little worried, but Vanessa’s bony foot was resting lightly on his thigh and he wasn’t pulling away. Slowly, he reached down with his flesh hand, and touched her phalanges, the bones looking impossibly small and delicate between his thick fingers.

He huffed to himself. “Wasn’t sure you’d feel solid. Real.”

“Only sure thing,” Vanessa said, a smile in her voice, “me and taxes.”

“Never paid taxes. No central government in my time.” He let go of her foot and reached for her.

“Dude, you gotta pay taxes,” said Wade, who had never paid taxes once in the fifteen years he’d been in America. “It’s your fucking… civic duty or something. Don’t be like the bourgeoisie.”

“I ain’t giving your murderous, cluster-clownfuck of a government a fucking cent.”

“Yeah, fuck the Man,” Vanessa said cheerfully, and put her hand in Nate’s.

Nate sucked in a breath through his nose and held very, very still. Slowly, incrementally, he relaxed, his fingers curling around Vanessa’s. 

They sat like that, tangled up in each other, for a while. Wade felt himself relaxing too. Unease slowly getting squeezed out like a knot out of a muscle. Wade let himself rest more fully on Nate, Nate’s breath warm on the top of his head, contrasting with the light chill of Vanessa’s skull resting on Wade’s shoulder.

“Hey, this is nice,” Wade said, both because the quiet was making him itch, and because it was nice and he wanted them to know. “Is this what it would be like?”

“Cuddle puddle at the end of the world,” Vanessa mumbled, sounding sleepy. "It'll be nice to rest."

"Aren't you _at_ rest? Being dead. Or," Nate huffed, "whatever the hell you are."

Vanessa shook her head. "I will not truly rest until all things are dead. Uh, of natural causes, I'm not going to kill them. That came out sounding kind of villainous."

"And Until then?"

"Until then, it's busy, busy, busy. Snatched moments, like this. Keeping things in balance."

"You've taken a lot of people from me," Nate said, quiet, contemplative, just for Vanessa. Not an accusation, really, just a statement.

"Not yet," Vanessa said, "and you'll see them again, don't be sad." She laughed, flipping her and Nate's hands so the palms were lined up, finger to fingerbone. "The afterlife is _real_ , Nathan Summers, and that's straight from the mouth of a cosmic entity. Nobody's _gone_ gone, just--" she waved her free hand, searching for the right words "--fuck, I don't know how to explain it. _'They have only slipped away into the next room.'_ "

To Wade's surprise, Nate laughed. A short, amused sound. "Scott-Holland," he said, nonsensically.

"Whom the fuck?" Wade asked.

"A poet, babe. Well, kinda a poet. I had to memorize his shit in 11th grade AP Lit and it's never left me since. How do you know it?" she asked Nate.

"Not a lot of things survived the books burnings," Nate said. "Whatever was left cost more than bullets. The library at the Askani compound... we had maybe a few dozen books. Biggest fucking collection in North America. One had that poem in it."

"Isn't that one of those funny little coincidences," Vanessa said. She let her hand drop, and Nate's dropped with it, coming to rest over hers on top of Wade's thigh. "Well, what do you say? You wanna hang out with us after I get off work?"

"You should," Wade said. It hadn't even occurred to him to want it until exactly this moment, but now post-apocalyptic snuggles was, somehow, everything he needed. Something he wanted with the selfish desperation of a small child. To know with _certainty_ that no matter how alone he felt, his favorite people would be waiting for him. "Nate, I'm gonna be around, probably, for a long fucking time. Longer than you, longer than anyone--longer than fucking _Wolverine_. Jesus pretzel-eating _Christ_ I am going to be so lonely. Please? I'm not begging, but I kinda am? I mean, take some time to think about it, but not too much time because who knows how many more ticks that grandfather clock of yours has." He reached up, cupping Nate's jaw in his hand. "Get it? It's a grandfather clock because you're so fucking old--"

"Calm down," Nate said, leaning into Wade's hand. "I'll be around. And stop acting like I'm gonna drop dead of old age any fucking second."

"You might," Wade snickered. "That hair gets grayer every time I look at it, and I _hear_ the way your knees pop in the morning. Any day now, you'll have to get those clunky, old-person sneakers with extra arch support, then it's only a short trip to getting a walker and--ooh, did it get really horny in here, or is that just me?"

Nate bit him on the thumb as Vanessa laughed. "Was that a yes?" she asked.

"Still not sure I believe in all this, yes," he waved Wade off as he opened his mouth, "despite evidence to the contrary. But I like spending time with you," he said to Wade. "Don't think that's about to change."

"What about me? Pout," Vanessa said.

"Did you just say 'pout' out loud," said Nate.

"I'm a little lacking in the lips department, give me a break."

The corner of Nate's mouth curled up. "Yeah, you're fun."

" _Yes_." Vanessa fist-pumped. "Although, as the _wife_ , it really should be you worrying about getting _my_ approval."

"It's something about the dad vibes he gives off," Wade interjected. "It makes you want to impress him."

"God, _such_ dad vibes."

 

_Two Hours of Chilling Later_

 

"Sorry to see you go, love to watch you leave, etc.," Wade said. He and Vanessa were holding hands in front of a gaping portal set into the living room wall, the edges flickering with black flame. Nate had tactfully disappeared somewhere. Probably the roof, where he liked to hang out and glare moodily at the city.

"You too, baby. You feeling any better?"

"Yeah," Wade said, honestly. They had all spent a good couple hours talking shit, swapping stories, trying and failing to understand Vanessa's increasingly flailing attempts to explain how all the cosmic forces of the universe clicked together. The patter of voices had soothed away Wade's itchy, anxious mood. "I think this is actually the _least_ existential dread I've ever felt."

"Fuck yeah," Vanessa said, and the tilt of her chin made her skull's grin look like a real smile, just for a moment. "So, what do you think? Do me and Nate make a good team?"

"Cable and Death?" Wade hummed to himself. "Wait, Cable and _Deadpool_ and Death. I _like_ that. Kind of a long title, but it has the kind of indie vibe that could play well with the younger audience. I was originally thinking you and me could do this whole _Death and the Maiden_ thing by ourselves, but team-ups _do_ seem to be raking in the big, box office bucks."

"Oh, if that's the case," Vanessa said, "we have to hop on that hype train immediately."

Wade nodded empahtically. "Thank you," he said, "for being so awesome about all of this. Me, him, the fact that I'm getting more ass than you for once--"

“Baby, I’m not gonna lie,” Vanessa said, reaching up to stroke Wade’s face, “I have been getting laid like _crazy_. Like, I shepherd people’s souls and stuff into the afterlife, and I’m all rawr, scary skeleton, grim reaper—but as soon as we cross over I’m a hot woman? They are _all_ over this.”

“Ness,” Wade said, “I think you might be taking advantage of the turbulent emotions of the newly deceased.” 

"I prefer to think of it as a job perk."

“It kind of sucks that we have to wait 102,500 years to have our first real threesome."

Vanessa shrugged. "We'll have to get creative. I could still wear a strap-on, probably. You might want to ease Nate into the idea, though. I think he's still a little scared of me."

"Ridiculous," Wade declared, leaning in to press a kiss on Vanessa's bare cheekbone. "Who could be scared of this adorable face."

Vanessa giggled. "Okay, I really do need to get back."

"You're still not allowed to fuck Elvis, by the way."

"Babe, you _know_ he only likes fourteen-year-olds."

"All my heroes are either dead or dead to me," Wade sighed. "At least I still have Bowie."

"... Sure, you do. Now, I _really_ need to go deal with something. Love you, bye."

"'Til the end of the line, Ness. Which is a reference to a _different_ popular pairing, but re-framed in a new context to fit the--"

"Let your wife go back to making the fucking universe spin, Wade," Nate shouted from the other room. Vanessa laughed. Wade smiled, softly, and for the first time in what felt like forever, when he let go of her hand, he wasn't afraid.


End file.
